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Reading While (it's) Hot

José Miguel Del Pozo Lopez

So Summer is basically done and short-wearing-nice-river-swimming Switzerland times are pretty much gone. Last week while doom-scrolling around with no particular subject in mind the internet found me reading an article about two famous hot actors carrying books in open sight. I was enthralled by the awe this news brought to popular culture (so to speak) and I cant but love this “news”. It does make sense tho, I don't know, but it was just about time books really became the official new thing that everybody needs to know, have, handle and care about. Although its fair to say that books have been flirting with popular culture for quite some time. What caught my attention -and that of 1 the writers discussing this subject- was the seeming incongruence between being culturally savvy, contemporary literature literate and a male thirst trap all at once. During the Tumblr age there was a moment where beautiful culturally engaged and mostly white people2 would take aesthetically precise photos of the books they were reading. I'm not just redacting the word reading because I'm a pretentious asshole that thinks that behind those pictures there was no actual reading, which I most certainly am and I also definitely thought, but because at that time reading was not the overall like gold mine that it became afterwards. In its own peculiar way reading has always been cool, all readers know this and we have somehow kept it hidden while being openly secretive about it.

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Being one of the three persons that reads me, dear reader4, you must already know that I'm having a lot of trouble finding the necessary attention required to commit myself to this beloved activity like I used to effortlessly not so long ago, so reading that I'm reading hopefully puts a little smile on your face. These articles have definitely brought back some smiles to my face for various different reasons: the “superficiality” of the subject, of course, because it is already clear to us that banality bears great depths within it; The fact that these dudes are allegedly reading women, and the idea that comes with thinking that men are unable to understand their view and feelings as well; that we might have demons that need to be processed thru reading women and, of course, that some of these reading men might be trying to see the history of the world thru the lenses of femininity and, the documents of the all around injustice5 that comes to light thru this literature. It is indeed funny to explore the incredible depth hiding beneath this apparent shallowness. I wont tho, I’m just ranting and venting.

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On one of these articles the book being read by one of these hotties caught 6 my attention: “Weird fucks” by Lynne Tillman, a book that reads like a strange travel book about getting laid in Europe. The title functions as a sort of double entendre, as it shows a very specific taste in books and at the same time underlines the weirdness of these hotties reading, they are -by all means- for us as readers and, for the person that writes the chronicle, weird fucks themselves. At the same time I was doom-scrolling, I was as well not-so-seriously reading this book and several others from the same writer, she is definitely worth the while. I say this because I find it curious that just a couple weeks away from buying her
books I “casually” get thrown into this rabbit hole, so I cant help but ask myself if I was algorithmed by the capitalist buying machine into it or, on the contrary? I was chosen because of my looks. I amazed by this riddle because, while the shock of it all comes from the inability to think of these guys as profound while banal, it also plays with the idea that these books might be just fashion accessories that they just know enough to wear and appear a certain way to a certain crowd. I, on the other hand, have been wearing deep ass books on my back pocket for quite some time. Not only to show that Im seasoned in these depths, but because I've recognized the much needed attention that comes from showing a good title coming out of my nice butt.

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So summer is officially over and reading while (it’s) hot is not a thing anymore. I have to say that, for quite sometime before summer, I already thought that I'd rather be fucked for my looks than for my books.

P.s. At the end of this obsessive reading spree i was happy, Ive realized something very important: I am reading again.

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1 Books have been shown and carried every now and then at plain sight by famous hot women.
2 i.e.: vice hipsters.
3 I mean reading as the activity that encompasses and fulfills an entire life style that requires a precise cultural attention, built with time and money. Quiet honestly a very privileged lifestyle.
4 i <3 u.
5 Past, present: contemporary.
6 http://gq-magazine.co.uk/article/joseph-quinn-ebon-moss-bachrach-book-guy-summer?utm_source=pocket_shared