Recession Reading: Famished for Fiction

I just finished the book "Reading Lolita in Tehran", a memoir about reading, teaching, and relating to "forbidden" fiction in the Islamic Republic of Iran in the 1970s and 1980s. In the book, author Azar Nafisi writes, "I have come to believe that genuine democracy cannot exist without the freedom to imagine and the right to use imaginative works without any restrictions. To have a whole life, one must have the possiblity of publicly shaping and expressing private worlds, dreams, thoughts, and desires, of constantly having access to a dialogue betweenthe public and private worlds. How else do we know that we have existed, felt, desired, hated, feared?"

Nafisi's memoir revolves around reading fiction within the realm of a repressive regime during a very specific time and place in history. However her words about the necessity of imagination and fiction to make us "whole" span a boundless time/space continuum. People have needed fiction as a means of survival and growth throughout history, and this does not change today. Here in the United States we are living during a recession, a time of political and economic uncertainty. Unemployment is at 7.6 percent, a high of sixteen years. People are scared. But we still have fiction. We still have that other imaginary world. And like others before and after us, we need to turn to this private world as both a means of self-evaluation and reflection, and as a means of escape.

I have always loved to read and write, especially fiction. I graduated with a degree in Literature and Writing, and continue to read whenever I can. However whenever I come to the end of one book, I almost always have trouble selecting a new one. Should I read one of the classics I never read? A new up-and-coming author? A novel of the avant-garde? So, I have decided to end that problem. I have decided to read all of the fiction books in the fiction section of a local bookstore in Los Angeles, in alphabetical order of the author's last name--hence, The AlphaBook Project.

Since I graduated I have been missing the frequent discussion of books that I used to have with classmates and professors. I am not sure if anybody will read this blog, but I have decided to post about the books I am reading. Hopefully people will join in with comments and thoughts, and discussion will ensue. In the very least, I will get a chance to "think out loud" about many other imaginative worlds that I'm excited to encounter. I'm not sure how often I'll post, or what I'll post about. I'm not giving myself any guidelines other than the main goal of the project because I want this to be enjoyable. I may not have money, I may be in debt, I may have a lot of uncertainty in life right now. But as Azar Nafisi affirms, I always have my other "world", this imaginary space that I can indulge in. And, like many others today, I am famished for fiction.

First up: "Graceland" by Chris Abani. After reading the back of the book, I learned that the author, Abani, is from Nigeria, and he published his first novel there at the age of sixteen. Since he suffered a lot of persecution for it, however, he went into exile in England and the United States, and now lives in Los Angeles. The book is about Elvis, a poor teenage boy in Lagos, Nigeria in the late 1970s and early 1980s, who makes money by impersonating Elvis in hopes of getting out of the ghetto. Sounds interesting. I'll keep you posted.