When the Queer Book Club announced its book for June would be Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides I was all set to read the work and head down to discuss its merits.
For one I already owned a copy, I didn’t need to go and buy the book. Tsundoku is a great Japanese word, it refers to the practice of buying books and letting them pile up to read later.
My home is filled with books I’m planning to read in the future. My husband has asked when I plan to find the time to read the stacks of unread novels and works of non-fiction that fill our house. “When I retire”, I say. “How long do plan on living for?” he retorts.
The books are not filed by the Dewey Decimal System, more by an informal feel of coolness. Authors I quite like are on display in the main part of the house, you’ll find the works of Douglas Coupland, Bret Easton Ellis, Richard Brautigan, Irvine Welsh, Alex Garland, Mark Danielewski, Jeff Noon, classics from Jane Austin, John Steinbeck, and George Elliot, plus many books written by friends.
There’s a couple of shelves of celebrity autobiographies, poems of Pablo Neruda, and a growing contingent of Japanese literature. In the study you’ll find business books and authors who have faded out of fashion.
Last year on the podcast The Rest Is Entertainment hosts Richard Osman and Marina Hyde discussed how they arrange their bookshelves, and it triggered an avalanche of comments. Osman arranges his books by size, he just wants them to look neat. Hyde’s novels are arranged into pre-1945 and post-1945 sections and are sorted alphabetically by author, then non-fiction works are sorted by subject. Hyde thinks Osman is a psychopath.
Where is Middlesex? I search the shelves. “Why do I own so many Gore Vidal novels?” I find myself wondering. I find every other novel written by Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides, The Marriage Plot… but no Middlesex. Did I lend it to someone? Did it get taken to Elizabeth’s Secondhand Bookshop in the great book purge of 2022? Alas, it’s not here.
Middlesex is one of those books you see in every op shop. It’s everywhere. Until you want to buy a copy that is. That’s the rule of op shops. I search but I do not find. It’s now half way through the month and I still haven’t found a copy – and I’m determined not pay full price for a book I have already owned.
I look to see if Middlesex is on the Libby app from my local library. It is! It’s only available in Polish. I don’t have time to learn Polish, and three years living overseas has taught me that languages are not my forte. I visit the actual Library on a Saturday afternoon. I haven’t been to the Library for a long time, I wonder if my borrowing card is still valid? I discover they now close at lunchtime.
Finally I find a copy – it set me back $2.00. It’s Friday night, the Queer Book Club meets on Wednesday. Eugenides Pulitzer Prize winning work is 529 pages long. I get up to page 76 – and it’s great, but I’m never going to make it.
Thankfully this month the chosen work is Lie With Me by French author Philippe Besson. It’s a slim book, and as I know I’ve never owned a copy I don’t mind paying for it when I drop by Crow Books. It’s just 148 pages. It’s been translated from French to English by Molly Ringwald. Yes- the star of Pretty in Pink and The Breakfast Club, sometimes jazz singer, and it turns out an accomplished translator.
While I’m at the bookshop I also grab a copy of Besson’s earlier work In The Absence of Men, plus Holden Sheppard’s new book King of Dirt, and a biography on Leigh Bowery – because Tsundoku.
On Sunday afternoon I sit in my local cafe and over a coffee begin to read Lie With Me. By the time I’ve finished the coffee I’m halfway through the book. A gaggle of teenage girls at the next table are working on a school assignment, crowded around their laptops. They have a giant bowl of fries with aioli delivered to their table.
I want fries now. French book, Pommes Frites. By the time I’ve eaten my own bowl, I’ve also completely consumed the entire book, an easy but engrossing read. A beautiful reflection on youth, a trip back to the 1980s when we all had to have acid-wash jeans, and an unusual story of love and liberation.
Grab a copy of the book, and head down to the Queer Book Club on the last Wednesday of the month. Wednesday, July 30 at 6:00pm at Pride WA in Northbridge.
Find out more about the Queer Book Club on their Facebook page.
