The Suicide Club

It deeply saddens me that I can not remember the last time I read a book.

So what have I been doing? Homework, spending many hours planning for our upcoming UFU event, basketball, college interviews and applications, chores, eating, sleeping (yes, sleeping)…

Since when did it become a lesser priority to nourish our intellect with something unique and powerful and transformative, a form of media that rips us out of our reality and neatly plops us in a world of our own creation – and the author’s? A form of telepathy, because the author is not there and yet we are reading their thoughts under their words, and sometimes, when they are a good author, it feels they are reading ours.

But, as you know, I am lying on one point of technicality- of course we all remember the last time we read a book, especially if you miss reading books whenever you wish, like I do.

I have never read a book when I wanted to. In fact, I always end up reading books when I explicitly do not want to, when I would really rather be doing something else. It always seems I find myself with a book over the summer, when there is barely any time to do anything. Last summer, my lab work and my trip to the delta not only considerably aged me in positive and negative ways, but also left me with half a week to myself in which a cherished relative chose to visit, and so my peace was happily ruined.

And over the summer I also happen to get cravings for books right when I am about to dive into the covers of my bed, especially because the suspense of post-apocalyptic books is often intensified in the delirium of the early hours of the morning. As are Harry Potter books, which all who bought each and every one at midnight probably understand.

And so the last time I caught myself sneaking a volume and a light into my world of adventure and extravagance, the volume’s title was The Suicide Club, written by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Far from entertaining any ludicrous ideas about my taste in literature, one should be curious as to what eccentric lengths I must have gone to obtain such an eccentric book.

Well I didn’t, I just checked it out at the library, but if I must say anything, then I will say it is a very unusual read that will probably change your entire mentality about the way typical, Western classics are written.