A Year in Reading: Allegra Hyde
The year had a surreal tinge. I travelled more than I had in a while, and this lent my days the mixed-up pleasure and terror of dislocation. I went to the Swiss Alps and ate cheese. I went to World of Coca Cola in Atlanta and drank soda until I felt sick. I went on TV and blinked into the bright lights. And then, back at home in Oberlin, Ohio, I went to class and talked to students about semi-colons—sometimes while wearing a mask, andand will be putting out a story collection next year (), I’ve been extra tuned in to the landscape of new books. But I read backlist books and classics as well. I mainlined audiobooks and Speechified-PDFs; I read short stories aloud to my beloved on a rocky beach in Maine; in bed, I held books above my face and read their pages like the underside of a small roof. I let the feelings provoked by imaginary worlds mingle with the upside-down feelings provoked by the world we live in. Which is all to say: to make sense of this surreal year, I’ve organized my reading into categories. I may be a Sagittarius sun, but I’m a Virgo moon. Here is what I’ve been putting into my eyes and ears, and what I’ve been talking about to anyone who will listen (and some folks who won’t).
