Play It As It Lays
The thing about requesting books is that you’re never entirely sure what the condition of the book will be like. And I’ve had some duds – coffee stains, old dog-eared editions, Chinese written in pencil over key phrases (perhaps someone was learning to read English?). But I was pretty pleased with a recent request of Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays, mostly because of this pretty bad-ass photo of Didion on the back cover.
The front of the book though, eh. Not something that would make me pick it up.
This cover though is a bit more promising.
Cover art aside, this book… it was not a book for me. If it weren’t for the cover art, I might not have written about this, because I haven’t the faintest idea what to write about. I read most of this in San Francisco, on my very rare morning out. I remember more about where I was reading the book than what I was reading! Yet somehow I finished it, without even realising what this book was really about. That’s not to say that it is well written. From reading The Year of Magical Thinking I knew that Didion could write. Play It As It Lays is after all one of those list books: TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005, The Guardian 1000, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, and perhaps more I haven’t thought of yet. So now I can tick it off my list (and all those other lists). But that thought still nags – did I not appreciate it enough? Was it the wrong book at the wrong time? Was it the excitement of just being out of the house and in the city (that sounds a bit sad…!)? Would I appreciate it more at another time, another age?
But with so many books, so little time, can I ever be bothered to go back to this book again? I’m not sure.
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