'A Book's Power to Make You Think'

“If you don’t know the exact moment when the lights will go out, you might as well read until they do.” The most ebullient and unpretentious book about the reading life I know is Clive James’ Latest Readings, published four years before his death in 2019. James had already been diagnosed with B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia and other ailments and the book is laced with references to his failing health and imminent mortality but remains largely free of self-pity. It sometimes feels as though reading is keeping James alive, the way the narrator of Tristram Shandy (and, perhaps, its author) convinces himself that writing will forestall his death. The sentence above is quoted from the introduction. In my own life the incidence of doctor visits and various medical tests has accelerated in recent months, and I’m facing three or four surgeries but nothing so dire as cancer. A reader asks an always-pertinent question: “What are you reading now?” Along with rereading Latest Readings: A…