If I were to make one confession about my library, it would be this: there are more unread books on my shelves than those that have been read. The books that haven’t been cracked open or dog-eared over the last few years have never stopped me from adding to my collection, or from borrowing books from the local library, and I try to imagine that they all sit on my shelves happily instead of dwelling in feelings of rejection—I’ll get to you, I whisper. As much as I have tried in the past, I have never been one to draw up a list of books ‘to be read,’ or to pick my next book before I have finished my current read. I am very much a mood reader and while I often think I know exactly what I want to read next, it usually changes the moment I have to make this decision—cue hours spent staring at bookshelf.
In the summer of 2019, I had to choose which seminars I wanted to attend as a graduate student as I completed my Master’s. As I looked through the course descriptions, one in particular caught my eye: a class dedicated to Henry James and his literary legacies. I selected this seminar as my first choice for the winter term not having read a single work by James but somehow knowing that I would enjoy his writing—and, I was right. The course was one of the highlights of my degree and I am still proud of the essay I wrote about the flâneuse in The Portrait of a Lady, which taught me so much about women’s relationships with nineteenth-century urban settings and James’ lasting influence that can be traced to works by Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, and Anita Brookner. It is easy to pick “anticipated reads” by authors we already know who have written books we continue to cherish, but what about the authors we don’t know? There are just certain authors that we are drawn to, without having read them before, without being pushed towards them by fellow readers, and somehow without much doubt, we instinctively know we will enjoy their books. I think this is what happened when I registered for the seminar on James, and now The Portrait of a Lady is my favourite classic—this may not be proof to a hypothesis, but it’s one result that certainly supports it!
There are a few authors and books that I am unfamiliar with but that I just know I will enjoy, so I went through my shelves this morning and wrote a few of them down…
Megan Gail Coles – Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club
Diana Evans – Ordinary People
Kazuo Ishiguro – The Remains of the Day
Mary Lavin – In the Middle of the Fields
Edna O’Brien – The Country Girls
Anne Tyler – Back When We Were Grownups
Jack Wang – We Two Alone
Joshua Whitehead – Jonny Appleseed
I was drawn to Coles’ Small Game Hunting when I read a very short review in The Globe and Mail before it was published. I borrowed Evans’ Ordinary People after reading the first few pages: two brothers throw a party in Crystal Palace, London to celebrate Obama’s election. I’ve had my eye on Lavin and O’Brien ever since I read that Alice Munro admires these two Irish writers. And Whitehead has been on this list ever since I first spotted Jonny Appleseed at the library back in 2018. I would love to say I will read all of these titles this year, but reading promises make this bibliophile a little nervous… I will get to them soon, that’s the only promise I will make, and hopefully keep!
Sydney K Erickson 
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