It is an eternal complaint of all bookworms that there isn’t enough time to read during school terms. It is slightly incorrect, yet very understandable that while we are so worried about doing the unfinishable amount of reading for our classes, reading for pleasure doesn’t sound so pleasurable anymore. And then the cycle continues; we reminisce about underlining and turning pages with anticipation, but we can’t find it in ourselves to keep our eyes open for one page more — Northfield’s cold reality freezing our way to other worlds, real and imaginary. So, old books come to mind with the memories of the past, memories reflecting off snow.

The end of the fall term found me lost in Piccadilly Station in London, stranded there due to a train malfunction and my natural inability to find my way. Waiting for my friend to pick me up, I barely managed to find a seat in the crowded station full of people trying to escape the wrath of the rain.My hands began to search into my bag, and out the mine came a diamond: a book. Meanwhile, London went on with her ghosts, magic and sewers. I missed calls from my friend, the book went on. 

The first book I read was Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. Once an avid reader of the genre, I haven’t read fantasy in a long time and was positively surprised by how casually it sparked a dash of color into the gray London sky. Telling the story of Richard Mayhew, an abnormally regular guy turned accidental warrior, Neverwhere is the London that reflects from the gasoline rainbows on the pavement. Richard is on his way to dinner with his awful fiancee when he encounters a wounded young woman on the side of the road and decides to help her, an event that consequently results in him becoming completely unseen and unheard, erased from the face of the Earth as he knows it. But there is a world that he doesn’t know: the London under his London, accurately named London Below, is “inhabited by the people who fell through the cracks in the world.” There is a good deal of fighting, mythical beasts and vague sexual tension. What perhaps made this book special for me was that it made the underground into this mysterious labyrinth. Passing through stations like Blackfriars and Earl’s Court suddenly became an occasion: yes! Was my life changed? Perhaps not. But isn’t it too much to ask of one book? To ask of every book? 

Shortly after, I fell through a The New York Times Book Review binge hole and found myself reading “Set My Heart on Fire” by Izumi Suzuki. It led me to the jolly occasion of discovering our library’s online catalog. Narrated by Izumi, who shares her name and many other things with the author, “Set My Heart on Fire” is a drug-infused, lustful tragedy. The author takes us through the underground jazz and rock scene of 1970s Tokyo, through the idle vignettes that Izumi hazily remembers in her drugged state. She is bored, God, how she is bored. And she cannot stop making bad decisions to save her life. A bad story is better than no story for her. She is a “myopic” follower of her desires; her only ambition is men, more of them, the best of them and the worst of them. She has a vast catalog. I read a lot of Japanese literature, and it was delightful to see how it differed from the usual cleanliness the tradition follows in my experience. Unfortunately, It doesn’t have much to say, aside from the value it possesses to be analyzed by a feminist lens. The one part where this book shocked me delightfully was towards the end when Izumi gets married to an abusive experimental jazz saxophonist, and the book takes a grimy turn. Then it ends. But she almost still has nothing to say besides the obvious.

Then came London Fields by Martin Amis. It came, and it stayed for a looong while. I read and read and barely made a dent in the book. It is not the longest book, it truly is not, but it had the A Hundred Years of Solitude effect on me in that I enjoyed it immensely, but I also understood why 80 percent of the people who start reading it never finish it. If “Neverwhere” is the myth of London, “London Fields” is the hangover you start feeling building up right after you leave a club in Soho. Set in a vaguely apocalyptic modern London, more than the city, it reflects the Y2K energy of ending the world with vice. Narrated by an author who claims to be telling the story of a murder before it happens, the book follows a diverse set of characters, from the high-class lackey to the grimiest grime of the streets. One Nicola Six, ethnically ambiguous and slightly omniscient, is to be murdered, and she is, not only entirely aware of it, but convinced that she has to make it happen. A plan involving a small-time criminal and aspiring professional dart player, Keith Talent — one of the least sympathetic characters I have ever seen — and a soft-spoken, wealthy, new father of a monster baby named Guy Clinch is what makes up most of the book. The plot is brilliant, and the worldly commentary is rich. The black humor and apocalyptic foreboding almost leave an aftertaste of tar: “he thought he was learning something about life, which always meant death.” Yet it is long and repetitive. The same scene plays out from different perspectives repeatedly, and the novel’s bleak tone doesn’t help either. But it makes one think, honestly. In a modern world defined by hedonism, isn’t death the only goal? 

So I reflect and dream of books and London, yet I find myself unable to read in these white Minnesota winter days.