finishing a really good book

Sometimes, I finish a really good book and I know that it’s one of the best I’ve read in a while. This may cause a reading slump: I want to treasure that one book for as long as possible. I don’t dislike that kind of slump, it is a peaceful one.

It’s like you’ve witnessed a storm and all you are left with is the aftermath: small fragments of ideas that float around in the air in search for a higher purpose, a bigger meaning.

I don’t think I’m trying to find the meaning or the message of the book. No, I’m trying to find out what it meant to me and what the message was that I received.

You see, after reading a book like that it simply is the case that your whole world has been turned upside-down. It takes a while to see things upright again.

Sometimes, I feel betrayed by the book. How could it be over? How dare it leave me in this in-between space where nothing makes sense?

It has no right to just strand me here with no instructions on how to survive. How does it expect that I will ever live my life again when it has just made me question everything I know?

The betrayal runs deep, but the longing runs deeper.

You see, after finishing a good book I simply long for more. For fantasy, I long to continue to live in that world. While I’m in that in-between reality, I would give anything to read that book again for the first time.

For romance or fiction, I long to feel those emotions again. When I read an emotional book, I get a tightness inside my chest. It is a raw, primordial feeling that only ever occurs when sitting in bed in the dark of the night struggling through those last chapters.

Struggling, I say, because I can’t wait for the next sentence, but I dread the moment it will end.

Because when I finish a good book, I find it really hard to let go.

Here is a list of books I read this year, that I am still trying to let go:

• The Idiot by Elif Batuman

• Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo

• Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe by Alire Saenz

• The Secret History by Donna Tartt