Sarah Gailey: Never Loved Reading More

Only in the sense that I ever wanted anything, which is to say that I wanted direction, knowledge, and the ability to make things better than they were; if I ever entertained the idea of being a writer, it was through the lens of wanting a passion that would give me access to a different version of myself.

A knife, if I pulled it out without warning.

SUCH SHARP TEETH by Rachel Harrison; I was drawn in by the promise of a real werewolf story, which promises blood and animalism. After a recent run of thrillers (which tend to veer away from gore) I felt in need of a book with a decent amount of slosh in the pages.

A strong desire to prove that I should never be allowed to describe things in prose.

You Only Live Once, David Bravo, because if I don’t have a physical copy of every Mark Oshiro book in my home, I will burst into flames.

It is early 2016 and I am in my friend Sharon’s living room in Oakland where she shares the bottom half of a duplex with her husband. There’s a rainstorm outside. We are drinking wine and tea and eating small snacks. We’ll order mapo tofu from the place around the corner in the near future but not yet.

Sharon has this beautifully heavy quilt and it’s draped over both our laps (it is big enough to cover the entire couch, the entire living room, the entire house). My laptop sits on the table and I suspect that soon I’m going to pick it up and start writing but, like the tofu, it’s not time yet. We have been silent for over an hour and have no intention of getting up any time soon. I have never loved reading more.

I read very broadly and tend to leave the question of assigning genres to things to be a conversation for marketing departments to handle. That said, I love microhistories – histories that focus on very narrow areas, like specific objects or behaviors. Girly Drinks by Mallory O’Meara is a recent favorite, with a focus on the global history of women and alcohol.

Feed Them Silence by Lee Mandelo.

Codex Seraphinianus by Luigi Serafini.

I’m intrigued by the way this question asks me to select books in the interest of manipulation rather than honesty; it feels like it would be insulting to any author I could choose to use their work in this way.

As such, I’ll say that if I wanted to showcase humanity in the best possible way, I’d gift the alien a selection of American History textbooks approved for use in elementary and middle-school levels of education. I couldn’t possibly come up with any other books that work so hard to paint the worst of us in a virtuous light.

The Godfather by Mario Puzo taught me half of what I know about how to exist in the world and half of what I know about how I never want to exist in the world.

Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova, because if it is half as good as I think it will be, then I will get to have a new favorite book.