I Don’t Like The Fair.

Walking away from book reviews and the bestsellers list.

I have a confession to make. I hoard books like they might never be printed again. I collect the ones with broken backs and pages stained like tea. They won’t be politically correct most of them and I may never even read them, but they at least have a new home, safe to gather dust for the rest of their long lives. There are a few modern paperbacks that make their way into the fold from time to time, but it seems they have more to prove. Their covers are usually insubstantial, smeared with marmalade or a wrinkled edge before I’m half way through. They don’t often live long lives, unless care is taken. It’s always the sticker that stands out (which is never a sticker I can remove), stating that it has been selected for a prize I don’t know the criteria for, or some celebrities book club. The title may be obscure but I seem to know the plot before I have even begun since most of the legacy media has already written that it’s a best-seller, so I’m an idiot if I don’t like it. I’m up against a lot before I have even begun. Part of me knows that I am not a renowned critic nor a Booker prize winner. I don’t have a degree in Literature so I’m due for an education. This is how the adults write, stand aside now and get ready to be impressed.

Except here’s the thing. I have started to read three best sellers in the past two weeks, with all of the above criteria in place. Some even with praise from other writers that I have enjoyed immensely. They all start off strong, thick with grammatical accuracy, the weight of mighty editors have rolled through these pages you can tell. They are impeccable. But after the first chapter I am an outcast again. I don’t like the story. Sure it’s “gritty and compelling”, it’s “precise and heart wrenching” a “page turner”. But I’m already sad, and the description of the explosion is too graphic, I already want to skip a few pages because I’m imagining my children if they lost me, and I can’t get past that, no matter how much the rest of the story wants to move ahead. I have stopped, I don’t want to walk that way. I am disappointed because I wanted to like the fair. I was all ready for the weeks of enjoyment ahead, a new world to visit. The crowds of other readers all walk past me all smiling and saying how bright it all is, but I stand there, ballon in my hand, bottom lip out. I don’t like it. “But why?”  I hear myself ask, “Everyone else does darling, why don’t you give it a try, you may like it after the first chapter? Give it a try, just for me? I’m sure it’s not all that bad, look! Everyone else is smiling! It’ll be fun in the end and listen now, we’ve paid for it, let’s not waste it.”

“But it’s making me sad” I say. “I’m not enjoying this, I don’t want to carry on”. I walk a few more paces, before the reluctance gets replaced by defiance. “The last time I just carried on I hated it remember? I kept going for page after page and it was exhausting, I never liked anyone in the end. I was cold and hungry by the last page. I told you I didn’t like it but you made me carry on. I’m not doing it. I’m not wasting any more of my time, even if everyone else likes in here, I don’t. I want to go somewhere it’s less noisy, I don’t like the lights flashing, the loud bangs and the sad bits. I wanted to go to that small park, the one with the huge oak tree and pond underneath, the one with the dragonflies. The park I get lost in, the one with the flowers and crumbling stone walls. It feels magical and exciting there. This place is too loud and the people aren’t nice. Can I go back now?”

And so I find myself, chin set, and feeling slightly awkward at being at odds with every review and literary agent. Is it me? I liked ‘Brideshead Revisited’ didn't I? That’s considered one of the best pieces of literature ever written. I loved it, I want to read it again and again, there’s a bit sad now and then and the characters rather odd and eccentric. But I understand them, I understand why they can’t figure it out. It’s sad but in a gentle way, almost beautiful, like flowers dying. I was captivated by ‘Shantaram’. That had a flimsy cover and pages of reviews. It was intense but again, I understood him, his values were right. It was a gift from my husband, a week after meeting me. It felt like a test, if I ‘got it’, then I’d somehow have understood him. He was communicating difficult feelings in the best way he could. I instantly fell in love with the book and it’s previous owner. It made me understand his heart. I didn’t care what was written on the cover, it took me back to India and to places I would never be brave enough to go, but wanted to and it fought for the right things in a wrong world. Today the cover is barely hanging on, but it made it into the library that my sons will one day own, with a love story of their parents concealed in-between its worn pages.

I always thought a person who hoards books would horde all of them. But I am more discerning than I thought. Not everyone likes Monet or Rothko after all. I didn’t realise that books had my criteria to meet. Who was I to even apply that? What did I know?

Turns out most of us actually do know what we like. Some of us walk through the Tate in London or the Met in Manhattan and pass by countless masters. Are bored after thirty minutes and spent more effort deciding on where to go for lunch (that’s their creative passion). Others keep a postcard of “The Lady of Shallot” by John William Waterhouse and still think of the candle blowing in the wind decades later. I see her now, the smoke snuffed out across the canvas.

As I face this realisation that my criteria is enough, that my hours reading are in fact far too precious to be wasted on someone else's taste, I think I may have grown a little. I have turned against the flow of popular opinion, as they all march on towards the fair. I have a lightness in my chest, my feet no longer dragging on the pavement. I hand the balloon on to someone else to enjoy, watching their face light up I know I made the right choice. I open the collar on my coat and decide to keep walking, allowing the day to surprise me. Turning a corner I see a pair of old iron gates, one open enough to pass through. Ivy grows thick on the walls and the path is littered with burnt maple leaves. The smell of wet earth, the drip of water on rocks from somewhere hidden. A statue buried under moss catches my eye and I know I’m going to like it here, far away from the fair.