Book-buying for different occasions

There is time for everything; and there is a book for every occasion. I always scrupulously maintain a mental book-buying list that is more specific than grandma's grocery list. Braving through the fumes of the city's used bookstores, I was on a mission to locate all the works by Alan Hollinghurst after I read The Line of Beauty. The Swimming-Pool Library (1988) depicts London in 1983 and in retrospect constitutes an air of the reckless sex. The period in which it was written was significant in the sense that was the last summer before AIDS swept and changed the gay community for good. The Folding Star (1994) became my faithful companion during my recent trip to Southeast Asia. It is a lengthy and hypnotic novel that tells the story of an emotionally detached man and his infatuation with his 17-years-old student. Substantial pages of the novel is some accentuated unreality of the man's dream and awareness. The Spell (1998) was unfortunately out-of-print in the United States. So I boarded my outbound flight to Hong Kong with The Folding Star and two movie tie-ins: The Memoirs of a Geisha and Brokeback Mountain. With a stroke of luck, I picked up a new copy of The Folding Star at Asia Books in Bangkok on my day of arrival. It's still sitting on my night-stand, all wrapped up and patiently waiting for its turn.

The point I try to make is that there is an unique occasion for every book - a call for the reading of a specific title. I designate a pile of books, usually stored in a plastic bin, which I would take with me on vacation. These books are usually light reads, trade paperbacks, and background materials related to my destinations. Past vacation readings include The Blackwater Lightship (when I was on a roll of Colm Toibin's works), The Civilization of Angkor (primer to history of Angkor architecture during my trip to Cambodia), and collection of short stories and essays.

Re-read pile consists of mostly Penguin Classics. I enjoy and specialize in Russian literature so The Master and Margarita is a frequent visitor to my reading list. The philosophical depth in redemption and death exuded from this novel makes it my current all-time favorite read. I conducted a third reading of Crime and Punishment and a second perusal of Brothers Karamazov last year, both translated by the husband-and-wife team Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. So as you see, Dostoevsky is another regular on my reading list.

So what is on now? I've got a random to-be-read pile from which I select my next reading. Here they are:

Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, Walter Kaufmann
The Overcoat, Nicolai V. Gogol
The Last Temptation of Christ, Nikos Kazantzakis
The Egyptologist, Arthur Phillips
Shakespeare's Language, Frank Kermode
The Spell, Alan Hollinghurst
Adrift on the Nile, Naguib Mahfouz

So many books, so little time. I might be able to clear the list during spring, unless serious intrusion of some literary delights occur.