Bookworming in 2007

Thoughts on reading in 2007.

I have started 2007 with two things that are going to change at least a little bit the way that this blog works. The first is a beautiful journal that Andrew gave to me sometime in November and the second is the book that I just read that allowed me to start writing in that journal.

For all you non-Andrew readers, this journal is a thick volume bound in wonderfully soft leather. I adore it. It's the kind of journal that the journal-loving part of me has lusted after for years but wouldn't allow myself to buy. It's beautiful and it has nice paper and it smells nice and feels nice in your hands. It ties shut with soft leather laces, has a soft leather page marker sewn into the binding, and has beautiful script in what I think is Italian printed on the covers. It's awesome.

Andrew got me this journal to encourage me to write more about what I read. The hope is that this will force me to THINK more about what I read, and maybe allow me to see how my thinking changes. Besides, I suppose that you never know when you are going to come up with something good, or at least something that might be useful in later reading or writing, so this journal is a way to organize those thoughts.

And for about a month, I was afraid of it.

The perfectionist in me didn't want to write in the journal until I had something particularly coherent and perfect to say. I mean, this collection of blank paper is beautiful so it seemed important somehow that the things that I put in there be polished and beautiful too, which of course was the exact opposite of the point, but sometimes I have a very very hard time squashing that perfectionist in me... she's persistent.

However, after a loverly and relaxing cruise with Andrew, I was reading during the trip home, and I wanted to write something. Part of this, of course was the annual New Year's bravery that comes over all of us, (Next year, I can do ANYTHING!) but another part was that the book that I was reading, In Praise of Slowness, left me thinking about things that I wanted to say, or at least, thinking about things that I wanted to think about on paper.

So I said them and thought about them, and over the next week and a half of reading that book and writing about it as I went, I have kicked off the use of that journal with no less than 27 pages of my thoughts about In Praise of Slowness and thoughts about my life in general that were brought on by the ideas in the book.

And all this writing felt good, although sometimes I have had trouble making myself slow down the reading enough to actually do it. Still, I feel that I really learned something from the whole thing, both the writing, and the act of writing about this particular book (which actually has a section, which I read after starting the journal, that suggests reading more slowly and deliberately and writing about what you read as a way to slow down and lead a calmer life.)

I think that I enjoyed the reading more because I did it less frantically, and I certainly got more out of it because I allowed the writing to open my mind and let me make some connections to my own life that maybe weren't obvious from the beginning or needed some time to flesh out in my head.

So for 2007, I am going to keep this beautiful leather journal with me, and I am going to use it, and the first 27 pages of writing that it contains to remind me that my reading is not a race. I'll be writing in it as I read, and reading and thinking more slowly than in the past. (For an example of the past, see the start of this blog, when I was reading so fast that the idea of writing even a page about the books became overwhelming and the blog trailed off as quickly as it started.)

Here I am going to write something like a review or a summary of those thoughts and the way that they developed after I have finished the books and taken the time to look back over and think about what I have written. Not just a rehashing, but a closing of my conversation with the book that I just read.

Its going to be a lot more work, and take a lot more time on my part, but I think that the action of taking more time is going to allow me to go deeper into the books, and will allow the books to have more of an effect on me, and for that alone, I think that it will be worth it. We'll see as it comes...

Welcome to 2007.