Mordere Book Review

I have been wanting to start my own series of book reviews for two reasons. Firstly, I love books. I often fantasise about what a wonderful life it would be to simply gnaw through a book and then digest it into my own words, picking out the bits that made something move inside me.

The second reason is that I have just started to read a book for the second time. Although this may not sound like a very relevant reason, I will add that I have never, not once, read a book twice in my entire life. I often think there is no point, since there are plenty of other books to be cracking on with whilst I live out my limited allotted time. Even so, I read this book from start to finish just last week, and already I am urged to get lost in its world again, as yet unsatiated by my first read. The book, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, has inspired me to start this review.

Mordere (the Latin word for bite) is a series of short book reviews in which I intend to untangle some of these moments of light which I have experienced through books. In the interest of keeping things “bite sized”, each review will be around 500 words long. I want readers to be able to taste the essence of a book immediately, without needing to read a laborious synopsis.

I will (probably) only review books which I like, for the simple fact that I do not finish books I do not like, and because I would like this to be a place for readers to quickly reference a list of recommendations when they wish to read something. I will not be using this review as a medium on which to wipe my dirty judgements on the doormat of someone else’s subjective literary product.

In my experience, it is in the practice of writing, as well as of reading, that the author/reader is searching for something they can’t quite put words or feelings to yet. The process of writing is part of the excavation, bending meanings until they evoke an emotion, a visceral resonance that they have been trying to make real and somehow relatable to the reader. In my writing I am trying to say, ‘Look, here’s my pain, ecstasy, loss, estrangement, love, awe, irrelevance - am I alone?’

Artist: Liz Gribin, A Love Story

It follows that the process of reading is therefore the converse, and perhaps more passive practice of soul-searching. When we read something which moves us, which brings us home to something as yet unrealised within our sense of self, then it is as though the author has offered us a puzzle piece that makes every minute of life thereon a little more worthwhile. Existence is at least temporarily more comfortable, more easy. For me, this feeling ignites a renewed sense of belonging within the otherwise nonsensical existence of earthly occupancy.

It is not only this that I look for when I read, but also a sense that I have not yet been able to give a specific word to as yet. It comes under feelings akin to nostalgia or hygge, a cosiness that takes the mind and soul into a comforting space to be held in for a short while. The Japanese term ikigai, meaning a sense of life and worth, might also be appropriate here.

Each book I review will be marked by this factor - let’s call it the Cosy Factor for now - since it is this which brings me back to a book like an addict looking for the next kick. As one of my favourite podcast hosts and author Daisy Buchanan once said, it is the feeling of having tea with Mr. Tumnus in the quiet hush of snow and forest at the beginning of C.S. Lewis's The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. You know what I mean.