What Soren Is Reading
He reads four books at once and finishes all of them. I find this both admirable and faintly suspicious.
Soren's current reading stack, as of this week, contains: a history of cartography that he has been working through slowly for two months; a novel he borrowed from a friend before a trip and has not returned; a short collection of essays by someone I haven't heard of; and a guide to the Velnen interior that is technically research for a trip we haven't booked yet.
He reads them in rotation. He has a system. He has tried to explain the system twice and I have understood it both times in the moment and forgotten it immediately after.
The cartography book has been on the go longest. I know this because it started on his side of the bed and has since migrated to the kitchen table, the desk in the study, and occasionally the windowsill above the bath. It moves around the way books do when someone is genuinely inside them — not performing reading but actually doing it, in whatever room they happen to be in.
He has dog-eared it at what appears to be every third page. I have asked him about this. He says the dog-ears are not bookmarks, they are a record of the things he wants to think about further. I have not asked a follow-up question because I suspect the answer will make me feel I am reading incorrectly.
What He Recommends
I have, over the years, read several things on Soren's recommendation and found them almost uniformly excellent. He does not recommend things lightly or often. When he hands you a book and says I think you'd like this, it is worth paying attention.
This week he has recommended the essays to me. He finished them in two sittings and left them on my side of the bed without comment, which is his version of a strong endorsement. I have started them. They are very good. I am not going to tell him immediately.
The novel borrowed before the trip is the one I am curious about. He has not mentioned returning it. He has not mentioned the friend. The book itself is showing the signs of someone who is enjoying it — it has been read in several weather conditions, by the look of the slightly warped cover.
I have not asked about it. Some reading is private. Even after years of sharing a bookshelf, a bedside table, and occasionally the same sentence, there are books that a person is not yet ready to discuss.
The borrowed novel, apparently, is one of those. I am waiting.