Nomad Online

I don’t have a reading list. I have a graveyard of unfinished books.

Some books were left only a few chapters in with the hope of returning to their stories one day. Others abandoned more than halfway through never to be picked up again.

I enjoy reading. I do. Really.

But sometimes I feel it’s a great investment of my time and emotional energy. Time and energy I feel I don’t have. Far easier to watch about ten YouTube videos neatly packaged into ten minute segments of entertainment.

I don’t lose myself in a story only to be sad when it ends then. And, you know, 100 minutes of fashion and styling tips by YouTube influencers isn’t a waste of time at all. Just ask me how you’d style this season’s Teddy coat.

But once in a while, I come across authors who weave magic. Who put words together in such beautiful and soul searing ways, all you can do is ugly cry on public transport as you read them on the way to work.

Trent Dalton is one such author for me.

I picked up Boy Swallows Universe because the hype. They said it was a masterful first novel and I was curious. Like many literary fiction, I thought it would end up in my graveyard of half-read books. But it didn’t.

I finished the book. And it was wonderful.

Since then he’s written All Our Shimmering Skies but it’s his latest book, Love Stories, that I’ve loaded on my Kindle to read. The crazy man went and sat on a busy Brisbane street with a typewriter and asked people to tell him a love story.

For two straight weeks he sat at a desk with a sky-blue 1960s Olivetti typewriter, on the bustling corner of Adelaide and Albert streets, Brisbane, with a sign saying, ‘Sentimental writer collecting love stories. Do you have one to share?’

Goodreads

I was intrigued. So I started reading.

I’ve just finished the first chapter and am now onto the second. It’s usually at this point I keep reading or leave it for another day. But he has such beautiful words and honest observations that I’m curious to see the other stories he’s captured.

Goodreads has a passionate review and states Dalton’s book is:

A heartfelt, deep, funny, wise and tingly tribute to the greatest thing we will never understand and the only thing we will ever really need: love.

And that’s why Love Stories is next on my “reading list”.

For #bloganuary. What book is next on your reading list?