This summer has not been nearly as productive for reading as I hoped that it might be. As it draws to a close, I am determined to do at least a little bit better at keeping track of what I'm reading for the rest of this year when I imagine that the reading time will be a little bit scarcer than it has been. With that I give you the list of what I'm reading right at this moment, with promises to write at least brief comments on each once I'm done with them and on to the next. Because really, I want to do this for me.
Currently Reading:
Fiction:
The Children's Hospital
by Chris Adrian
2006
615 pages
Wednesday, July 29 -
Non-Fiction:
The Super-Organism:
The Beauty Elegance and Strangeness of Insect Societies
by Bert Holldobler and E.O. Wilson
2009
502 pages
Tuesday, July 28 -
Showing posts with label thoughts about reading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thoughts about reading. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Studying as my Reading Breaks
In my last post, I said that I have been reading as my study breaks, but that is not exactly true. The truth is something more along the lines of studying during my reading breaks... and while I probably need to tone it down a little bit, I am having a grand old time.
The problem with reading being my vice is that unlike so many other vices, the recently cut out TV for example, it doesn't FEEL like a vice when I'm doing it. It's an intellectual activity, one with some level of educational and cultural value (depending on what you read I suppose). A love of books and reading is a trait that I would cultivate rather than squash in my children if ever I have any. (Imagine for a moment the financial disaster that could result form setting me loose in a bookstore with a little mini bibliophile with the same lust for full sets that I have... there are currently something well over 60 American Girl historical fiction books alone!)
The point being, I have trouble making myself feel guilty about reading, even when I am reading The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death when I should, instead, be reading my microanatomy syllabus. Blame my parents for all that relentless positive reinforcement, reading aloud to me and buying of books when I was a child. (You created a monster!) It still, as an adult, seems wrong to set a timer that beeps when I have to stop reading when the only beeping timers that I heard of as a child told my brother that he could. Not wanting to stop was not a problem for him, but I can assure you, it is a big problem for me.
Still, after overindulging a little, and knowing my personal tendency to binge read, I have pulled out the little purple timer bookmark that Andrew the Wonderful bought for me sometime ago, and started limiting myself to 1/2 hour or 45 minute stints...or at least trying to. I am trying to convince myself that while Saul Bellow's collected short stories will still be there for me to read when exams are over (although I may have to renew them from the library), I will not be able to reclaim the study time after the tests have passed.
And with that, I am off to study. After reading for half an hour, of course.
The problem with reading being my vice is that unlike so many other vices, the recently cut out TV for example, it doesn't FEEL like a vice when I'm doing it. It's an intellectual activity, one with some level of educational and cultural value (depending on what you read I suppose). A love of books and reading is a trait that I would cultivate rather than squash in my children if ever I have any. (Imagine for a moment the financial disaster that could result form setting me loose in a bookstore with a little mini bibliophile with the same lust for full sets that I have... there are currently something well over 60 American Girl historical fiction books alone!)
The point being, I have trouble making myself feel guilty about reading, even when I am reading The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death when I should, instead, be reading my microanatomy syllabus. Blame my parents for all that relentless positive reinforcement, reading aloud to me and buying of books when I was a child. (You created a monster!) It still, as an adult, seems wrong to set a timer that beeps when I have to stop reading when the only beeping timers that I heard of as a child told my brother that he could. Not wanting to stop was not a problem for him, but I can assure you, it is a big problem for me.
Still, after overindulging a little, and knowing my personal tendency to binge read, I have pulled out the little purple timer bookmark that Andrew the Wonderful bought for me sometime ago, and started limiting myself to 1/2 hour or 45 minute stints...or at least trying to. I am trying to convince myself that while Saul Bellow's collected short stories will still be there for me to read when exams are over (although I may have to renew them from the library), I will not be able to reclaim the study time after the tests have passed.
And with that, I am off to study. After reading for half an hour, of course.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Seriously, How Did It Get to be 2009?!
OK, Not only is it 2009, but it's damn near February 2009. And I haven't written in here since July. What happened?!
The answer, of course, is MEDICAL SCHOOL. But what are you going to do?
So it's January, time for my annual entry thinking about how I am going to read this year. And my annual promise to write more in the book blog. We all know how well those have turned out. Perhaps this one will be better. Either way, here's what I am thinking:
I gave up TV. The official reason being that this block of classes is important and I want to do well so that I can get good grades and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The actual reasons are a little more complicated. Certainly, I do want better grades, and spending more time studying is a good way to work towards that goal, but there's more to it than that. And if you asked me whether I would rather spend my Thursday evenings with Gross Anatomy or Gray's Anatomy the answer is easy and not the one that Dr. Giffin would like to hear, but there will be no more Dr. McDreamy in my life. Seriously.
Part of this comes from the fact that I am engaged now, and Andrew The Wonderful will be moving here in the spring/early summer. This means that I have to do some thinking about the way I spend my time, especially my "alone time," since there will be less of it. Now, I am not complaining about that. In fact, I couldn't be more excited to be trading my alone time for more Andrew time, but it does mean that I'm thinking about the way that I spend my evenings. Mostly what I've come up with is that I know that I will want to be spending time with him, and that he will not want to be spending that time watching One Tree Hill. The way that I live my day to day at the moment (odd hours, etc) is not overly conducive to sharing living space with another person, and probably also not overly conducive to my own health. It needs to be, at least, thought good and hard about, and nixing the TV seemed a good way to add some thinking time (and maybe some sleeping time as well). And of course, the good grades I want, not just for their own sake, or for the sake of the good feelings and pride that comes with them, but also because with being engaged comes the reality that all future life choices will be made as a pair, and I sure as hell am not going to be the one that limits our choices of future locations by having grades that prevent me from matching wherever I damn well choose. So there.
But there's more to it than those things too. I was sort of thinking about the kind of person that I want to be, in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps the way that an author would describe me were he to be introducing my character in a novel. This is not new patten, but I turned the lens toward the TV watching. Now, which would you rather: Maggie is a voracious and thoughtful reader OR Maggie is the type of person who can tell you, exactly, what happened on Desperate Housewives last night?
One of those things is better than the other, or at least, closer to the way that I see myself, closer to the way that I want to be.
So I'm reading as my study breaks, which makes them more flexible and more enjoyable and better for my brain and my ability to hold interesting conversations. And is certainly better for this blog. We'll see how it goes. I suppose that I could promise to write in here once a week, or something like that, but I am trying to make more reasonable resolutions this year. Ones that take into account all the little things in life that you can't predict. So no number based promises, just some thinking, and a promise that, at the very least, there will be more thinking.
The answer, of course, is MEDICAL SCHOOL. But what are you going to do?
So it's January, time for my annual entry thinking about how I am going to read this year. And my annual promise to write more in the book blog. We all know how well those have turned out. Perhaps this one will be better. Either way, here's what I am thinking:
I gave up TV. The official reason being that this block of classes is important and I want to do well so that I can get good grades and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The actual reasons are a little more complicated. Certainly, I do want better grades, and spending more time studying is a good way to work towards that goal, but there's more to it than that. And if you asked me whether I would rather spend my Thursday evenings with Gross Anatomy or Gray's Anatomy the answer is easy and not the one that Dr. Giffin would like to hear, but there will be no more Dr. McDreamy in my life. Seriously.
Part of this comes from the fact that I am engaged now, and Andrew The Wonderful will be moving here in the spring/early summer. This means that I have to do some thinking about the way I spend my time, especially my "alone time," since there will be less of it. Now, I am not complaining about that. In fact, I couldn't be more excited to be trading my alone time for more Andrew time, but it does mean that I'm thinking about the way that I spend my evenings. Mostly what I've come up with is that I know that I will want to be spending time with him, and that he will not want to be spending that time watching One Tree Hill. The way that I live my day to day at the moment (odd hours, etc) is not overly conducive to sharing living space with another person, and probably also not overly conducive to my own health. It needs to be, at least, thought good and hard about, and nixing the TV seemed a good way to add some thinking time (and maybe some sleeping time as well). And of course, the good grades I want, not just for their own sake, or for the sake of the good feelings and pride that comes with them, but also because with being engaged comes the reality that all future life choices will be made as a pair, and I sure as hell am not going to be the one that limits our choices of future locations by having grades that prevent me from matching wherever I damn well choose. So there.
But there's more to it than those things too. I was sort of thinking about the kind of person that I want to be, in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps the way that an author would describe me were he to be introducing my character in a novel. This is not new patten, but I turned the lens toward the TV watching. Now, which would you rather: Maggie is a voracious and thoughtful reader OR Maggie is the type of person who can tell you, exactly, what happened on Desperate Housewives last night?
One of those things is better than the other, or at least, closer to the way that I see myself, closer to the way that I want to be.
So I'm reading as my study breaks, which makes them more flexible and more enjoyable and better for my brain and my ability to hold interesting conversations. And is certainly better for this blog. We'll see how it goes. I suppose that I could promise to write in here once a week, or something like that, but I am trying to make more reasonable resolutions this year. Ones that take into account all the little things in life that you can't predict. So no number based promises, just some thinking, and a promise that, at the very least, there will be more thinking.
Reading on the T
Once or twice a year when I was in college in Boston, I would decide that I wanted to disappear for the day. Always on a Sunday, always in the winter, usually after a bit of dreary weather. I would decide the night before, and wake up earlier than usual for a Sunday, say 9 or 9:30. I always wore the same thing, a pair of worn out jeans with lots of holes and a dark grey form-fitting turtle neck sweater from J.Crew, fuzzy socks in comfy shoes, hair down or in a braid, no makeup, cute hat if I was feeling trendy, no gloves, coat only if the wind chill dictated that it would be foolish to go without one. I didn't have glasses at the time, but if I did I would have worn those, too. In this outfit I thought that I looked cute and comfortable, smart and Bostonian. I would pack my wallet, my journal, a pen and a novel of medium length that I had been meaning to read but hadn't really started, then grab breakfast, head for the BC stop at the end of the Green Line, and get on the train.
On these days there was no set plan, no errands, no real mission except to get away from everyone, enjoy Boston, and read whatever book I had brought along in its entirety. I would ride the T for hours, getting off and switching lines and directions whenever the mood struck me or I knew that I was going to have to pay more if I went any further, getting coffee at the in-station Dunkin' Donuts in the Government Center Station and reading my book. I would get off sometime in the early afternoon when I got hungry and grab food. I remember eating at a bagel place near Park Street, pizza in Harvard Square, at the little cafe in Trident on Newbury. Then I would spend some time in a nearby location that was unbothered by someone who wanted to just sit and read: a coffee shop, the Harvard bookstore, the Barnes & Noble in Brighton, the BPL. When I needed a break from the book I would people-watch or window-shop, just walk around or write in the journal. When I deemed myself near enough to the book's end, I would get back on the train and head to BC, always taking the B line, and always finishing the book at some point on the way back.
All the times that I did this, I think it was 6, I never once ran into anyone I knew. During the whole day, I would hardly talk to anyone, mostly just the people I ordered coffee from, bums asking for money, tourists asking what stop they should get off at for Harvard Square or Boston Common. Nothing that would qualify as a real conversation, say a couple hundred words all day long at the very most. Once I had a cell phone, I suppose that I brought it with me, but it was off or on silent. I spent those days, surrounded by people sure, but really, alone with my book.
This is simply not possible in Cincinnati. For one, obviously, there is no T, no train of any sort, and also, not really much of the same friendly downtown walk around areas, but that is not really the problem. The problem is that the fine people of the mid west are friendly. These people, whether they know you or not, see being in the same place at the same time as the ONLY prerequisite for conversation. They all want to chat.
In the past two weeks, I have not once managed to wait for a bus without a conversation, without learning at least some part of the life story of someone else waiting. I have met a graduate student from Sri Lanka who told me about the parts of America he wanted to visit and asked me to explain how Connecticut was different than Ohio, a pink-hatted woman from India who told me that global warming is making New Delhi both warmer in the summer and colder in the winter, and that homeless people there are freezing to death, a fourth year medical student infuriated with the irregularity of the shuttle, a man who complained that since Cincinnati was a smaller city there were no clubs open long enough to be worth going to when he got off work at midnight, and a woman taking her four year old son (in superhero pajamas just like the ones my brother used to wear) to the doctor to get his strep throat taken care of.
These people are interesting, and I am not saying that I don't enjoy the conversations, but it is nearly impossible to, without being rude, pull off the surrounded by people but still alone thing. People just start conversations. It's fascinating.
Today, my cell phone missing, a productive studying day yesterday, I decided to sort of try the reading in public thing. I did have a couple of errands to run too, and once I got my car from the garage at school, I drove, but I was thinking of those Boston days when I set out. I sat for a while in the bagel shop near my apartment. One of the guys that works there came by cleaning tables and sucked me into a 5 minute conversation about what the Sox should do about Tek. Then, waiting for the bus to go to campus, another woman waiting asked when the next bus was coming, and then chatted until it arrived. The woman waiting next to me for our food at Panera wanted to know what I had ordered, if I liked it, would she like it even if she didn't like spicy food? The checkout lady at Target was pregnant and due in two weeks, the customer in front of me in line started the conversation, and soon she was asking both of us what we thought of her baby names. The clerk in the bookstore noticed what I was reading, asked if I liked it, then if I had read something else slightly related, and talked about books for 10 minutes. These things just don't happen in Boston.
Now, this is something that I like about Cincinnati for the most part, I have enjoyed these little chats and the whole series of people that I have had long talks with but know none of their names. It's charming, most of the time. It sure makes waiting for the bus go faster.
But today... today I really really missed those days alone with my book and all those people providing an interesting, but not terribly interactive background. Today I missed those jeans and that sweater, thrown away because I wore them out a little too much. Today I really, really, really wished that I could have been reading on the T.
On these days there was no set plan, no errands, no real mission except to get away from everyone, enjoy Boston, and read whatever book I had brought along in its entirety. I would ride the T for hours, getting off and switching lines and directions whenever the mood struck me or I knew that I was going to have to pay more if I went any further, getting coffee at the in-station Dunkin' Donuts in the Government Center Station and reading my book. I would get off sometime in the early afternoon when I got hungry and grab food. I remember eating at a bagel place near Park Street, pizza in Harvard Square, at the little cafe in Trident on Newbury. Then I would spend some time in a nearby location that was unbothered by someone who wanted to just sit and read: a coffee shop, the Harvard bookstore, the Barnes & Noble in Brighton, the BPL. When I needed a break from the book I would people-watch or window-shop, just walk around or write in the journal. When I deemed myself near enough to the book's end, I would get back on the train and head to BC, always taking the B line, and always finishing the book at some point on the way back.
All the times that I did this, I think it was 6, I never once ran into anyone I knew. During the whole day, I would hardly talk to anyone, mostly just the people I ordered coffee from, bums asking for money, tourists asking what stop they should get off at for Harvard Square or Boston Common. Nothing that would qualify as a real conversation, say a couple hundred words all day long at the very most. Once I had a cell phone, I suppose that I brought it with me, but it was off or on silent. I spent those days, surrounded by people sure, but really, alone with my book.
This is simply not possible in Cincinnati. For one, obviously, there is no T, no train of any sort, and also, not really much of the same friendly downtown walk around areas, but that is not really the problem. The problem is that the fine people of the mid west are friendly. These people, whether they know you or not, see being in the same place at the same time as the ONLY prerequisite for conversation. They all want to chat.
In the past two weeks, I have not once managed to wait for a bus without a conversation, without learning at least some part of the life story of someone else waiting. I have met a graduate student from Sri Lanka who told me about the parts of America he wanted to visit and asked me to explain how Connecticut was different than Ohio, a pink-hatted woman from India who told me that global warming is making New Delhi both warmer in the summer and colder in the winter, and that homeless people there are freezing to death, a fourth year medical student infuriated with the irregularity of the shuttle, a man who complained that since Cincinnati was a smaller city there were no clubs open long enough to be worth going to when he got off work at midnight, and a woman taking her four year old son (in superhero pajamas just like the ones my brother used to wear) to the doctor to get his strep throat taken care of.
These people are interesting, and I am not saying that I don't enjoy the conversations, but it is nearly impossible to, without being rude, pull off the surrounded by people but still alone thing. People just start conversations. It's fascinating.
Today, my cell phone missing, a productive studying day yesterday, I decided to sort of try the reading in public thing. I did have a couple of errands to run too, and once I got my car from the garage at school, I drove, but I was thinking of those Boston days when I set out. I sat for a while in the bagel shop near my apartment. One of the guys that works there came by cleaning tables and sucked me into a 5 minute conversation about what the Sox should do about Tek. Then, waiting for the bus to go to campus, another woman waiting asked when the next bus was coming, and then chatted until it arrived. The woman waiting next to me for our food at Panera wanted to know what I had ordered, if I liked it, would she like it even if she didn't like spicy food? The checkout lady at Target was pregnant and due in two weeks, the customer in front of me in line started the conversation, and soon she was asking both of us what we thought of her baby names. The clerk in the bookstore noticed what I was reading, asked if I liked it, then if I had read something else slightly related, and talked about books for 10 minutes. These things just don't happen in Boston.
Now, this is something that I like about Cincinnati for the most part, I have enjoyed these little chats and the whole series of people that I have had long talks with but know none of their names. It's charming, most of the time. It sure makes waiting for the bus go faster.
But today... today I really really missed those days alone with my book and all those people providing an interesting, but not terribly interactive background. Today I missed those jeans and that sweater, thrown away because I wore them out a little too much. Today I really, really, really wished that I could have been reading on the T.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
LibraryThing Wins
So since I got started on Librarything, I have been more obsessed with books than ever. I'm not sure if that is really a good thing. (Does anyone ever really NEED to be more obsessed with books that I have been for as long as I can remember? Probably not.) Either way, I'm enjoying it. It's keeping me reading, but I feel compelled to write about the things that I read (at least a brief review) and keep track of them in my posting for that purpose, so it's keeping me on track with those habits that I was trying to solidify.
That being said, writing those reviews is not really the same as what I do when I blog about books, since the things that I post on the site are seen by users outside the context of "me." Therefore, the things that I post don't always touch on the ways that the things that I am reading hit me personally or connect with the little goings on in my head and my life, or how I ended up with that particular book in my hand or anything like that. I like the reviewing, and I hope that the things I contribute help people out, but it's not the same. I want to do both maybe, both to synthesize my thoughts into something useful for the general non-Maggie knowing reader in terms of a well-thought out opinion of a book and how good or bad it is, and to take the time to organize my thoughts for the Maggie-knowing reader, or perhaps more importantly, for the Maggie herself to better know what I was thinking when I read something, and how it plays out with the other things in my life. I think doing both is important, and I am not sure that I know how to find time for both, but what are you going to do?
Anyway, I guess that I am going to post my reviews here as well, for the three people that might occasionally read this thing, and when a book touches me, or I have thoughts that just don't fit with a review, I'll put them in after the review. We'll see how that works for now. Cool.
That being said, writing those reviews is not really the same as what I do when I blog about books, since the things that I post on the site are seen by users outside the context of "me." Therefore, the things that I post don't always touch on the ways that the things that I am reading hit me personally or connect with the little goings on in my head and my life, or how I ended up with that particular book in my hand or anything like that. I like the reviewing, and I hope that the things I contribute help people out, but it's not the same. I want to do both maybe, both to synthesize my thoughts into something useful for the general non-Maggie knowing reader in terms of a well-thought out opinion of a book and how good or bad it is, and to take the time to organize my thoughts for the Maggie-knowing reader, or perhaps more importantly, for the Maggie herself to better know what I was thinking when I read something, and how it plays out with the other things in my life. I think doing both is important, and I am not sure that I know how to find time for both, but what are you going to do?
Anyway, I guess that I am going to post my reviews here as well, for the three people that might occasionally read this thing, and when a book touches me, or I have thoughts that just don't fit with a review, I'll put them in after the review. We'll see how that works for now. Cool.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Library Thing
So joining LibraryThing.com has got me thinking. I am sort of in love with the site, and with reading the posts and thoughts of people who seem to be readers of the same obsessive sort that I am. Still, I have to ask myself how I want to use all the tools that they have there.
First of all, do I want my LibraryThing account to reflect books that I have read, or instead, the physical collection of books that I own? Sure, there is considerable overlap between the two, but there are also a tremendous number of books that I have read and do not own, books that I own but have not read yet. Since it would be fundamentally impossible to remember and list all the books that I have ever read (and I think not a useful exercise), I have decided, at least for now, that I want the list to reflect the books that I actually have in my possession as opposed to any sort of exhaustive reading list.
But this made me think about what it means to have a collection of books, as opposed to just having books. I own many many books, and I suppose, when I really think about it, I do consider myself a collector. But I realized that there are many books that I truly love that I do not have a copy of in my possession at the moment, either because I didn't bring them with me on some move, or because I lent them out and never saw them again, or because I read copies borrowed from the library or a friend and never got my own. Now, it doesn't make sense to me, as a collector, to have so many books that I haven't read (or even that I have read but don't really adore) when I don't have some that I really love. And the idea of logging all these books into my LibraryThing account and rating them and writing reviews, and not owning some that really matter to me, I find that distressing.
So, I'm going to try to think about this more, or at least, be more deliberate about choosing the books that I buy (as something distinct from the books that I read). For books that I just want to read, I have to remember that I have a wonderful library right around the corner from me, and I can get them there and save myself some money and space, if I am not sure that I will ever want to read a book again. Then I can focus on owning books that I love, or books from authors that I love, and having a collection that reflects my tastes and my personality more than the random whims that take me to the bookstore. I just need to keep track of all those books that I see and think "Oh! I want to read that!" and not allow that impulse to cause me to put out money. I need to learn how to separate wanting to read a book and wanting to own a book as distinct impulses. It might take some thinking, but I think that using LibraryThing in an act of cataloging might help me to do that.
So with deciding that I want to use it as a catalog for my collection, comes the question of choosing to pay for it. It's free to join, to use the message boards and communicate with other readers, and to list up to 200 books in your library. I have WELL over 200 books in my library, so I have to choose between having an incomplete catalog and paying a fee. ($10 a year or $25 for lifetime membership.) It seems to me that would be money well spent, but given my tendency towards fits of enthusiasm followed by an utter lack of attention, I think that I will spend a few weeks trying to get into a pattern of use, and answering the questions that the use brings up for me, before I put down the money for something and then just ignore it completely.
I’ve also got to ask myself questions about rating and commenting and reviewing, and how I want to go about blogging what I read and thinking about books that I really do want to own, but I have to let it be a process, or I’ll burn out too soon.
And with that, I’m going to stop writing for now.
First of all, do I want my LibraryThing account to reflect books that I have read, or instead, the physical collection of books that I own? Sure, there is considerable overlap between the two, but there are also a tremendous number of books that I have read and do not own, books that I own but have not read yet. Since it would be fundamentally impossible to remember and list all the books that I have ever read (and I think not a useful exercise), I have decided, at least for now, that I want the list to reflect the books that I actually have in my possession as opposed to any sort of exhaustive reading list.
But this made me think about what it means to have a collection of books, as opposed to just having books. I own many many books, and I suppose, when I really think about it, I do consider myself a collector. But I realized that there are many books that I truly love that I do not have a copy of in my possession at the moment, either because I didn't bring them with me on some move, or because I lent them out and never saw them again, or because I read copies borrowed from the library or a friend and never got my own. Now, it doesn't make sense to me, as a collector, to have so many books that I haven't read (or even that I have read but don't really adore) when I don't have some that I really love. And the idea of logging all these books into my LibraryThing account and rating them and writing reviews, and not owning some that really matter to me, I find that distressing.
So, I'm going to try to think about this more, or at least, be more deliberate about choosing the books that I buy (as something distinct from the books that I read). For books that I just want to read, I have to remember that I have a wonderful library right around the corner from me, and I can get them there and save myself some money and space, if I am not sure that I will ever want to read a book again. Then I can focus on owning books that I love, or books from authors that I love, and having a collection that reflects my tastes and my personality more than the random whims that take me to the bookstore. I just need to keep track of all those books that I see and think "Oh! I want to read that!" and not allow that impulse to cause me to put out money. I need to learn how to separate wanting to read a book and wanting to own a book as distinct impulses. It might take some thinking, but I think that using LibraryThing in an act of cataloging might help me to do that.
So with deciding that I want to use it as a catalog for my collection, comes the question of choosing to pay for it. It's free to join, to use the message boards and communicate with other readers, and to list up to 200 books in your library. I have WELL over 200 books in my library, so I have to choose between having an incomplete catalog and paying a fee. ($10 a year or $25 for lifetime membership.) It seems to me that would be money well spent, but given my tendency towards fits of enthusiasm followed by an utter lack of attention, I think that I will spend a few weeks trying to get into a pattern of use, and answering the questions that the use brings up for me, before I put down the money for something and then just ignore it completely.
I’ve also got to ask myself questions about rating and commenting and reviewing, and how I want to go about blogging what I read and thinking about books that I really do want to own, but I have to let it be a process, or I’ll burn out too soon.
And with that, I’m going to stop writing for now.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Back to Blogging: Booklist and New Tool
OK, so I live in Cincinnati now, and I have been thinking that I wanted to get back to blogging (since summer is PRIME TIME for basking in the sunshine and reading my afternoons away) but "the road outside my house, is paved with good intentions" as it were.
Anyway, today I was sitting at my desk in my new lab, feeling somewhat overwhelmed by the sheer volume of work related reading that I have to do, so I decided to take a break and find something else to read.
So I went to the blogger website. In blogs of note for the month, they have listed Women in Science, which seemed interesting... since I suppose I am one. From there, I checked out Neurosciencegirl... since I suppose I am one of those too. There I found the list below, which I thought was interesting.
This is the list of the 100 or so books most often listed as "unread" by LibraryThing users. You're supposed to bold the books you've read, underline the ones you read for school, and italicize the ones you started and didn't finish. Interestingly, blogger doesn't seem to have an underline feature, I assume because that implies that something is a link, so I'm just bolding what I've read, no matter what the reason. I'm also putting a (*) next to the ones that I own but haven't read, (**) for books that are in my digital book's library but not yet read. Here's my list:
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina**
Crime and Punishment**
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude*
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick**
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities**
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace**
Vanity Fair**
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books*
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex*
Quicksilver*
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man*
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch**
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo**
Dracula**
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility**
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist**
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune*
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere*
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners**
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed*
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame**
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield**
So a couple of things I think are slightly interesting: There are 102 books on this list, and I have read only 36 of them, (which doesn't seem like so very many). I traced the list back as many blogs as I could (turned out to be four) and 36 seems better than average. Also, I seem to be a lot less likely to start but not finish.
Of course, the other intriguing thing about this is : "Where does this list come from again? What exactly is Library Thing?" And it turns out that LibraryThing.com is a very cool little website where you can create a personal profile with all the books in your own library, rate and review them, and then connect with people that have similar taste in books or get recommendations for things to read. So I joined up, and while my library is not even sort of started yet, here it is.
So that makes this list make a little more sense to me, because it didn't seem like a real "Top 100" by any criteria I can think of, but it totally makes sense to me as the "100 books that people that really love books are most likely to have bought, be willing to admit that they own, but not gotten around to actually reading." If that's the criteria, then a list that combines classics (cult and literary) with a bunch of fairly recent popular fiction and some interesting but general non-fiction makes perfect sense. A list of books that would lead readers to think, "I really should read that..."
And by that standard, I am a pretty boring, normal reader. Because there are only about three books here that I have not at least picked up and considered at one point or another... such is life.
Anyway, I'll get internet access back on Monday, and then spend a couple of days playing with my LibraryThing bookshelf, and writing some reviews and figuring out what standards I am going to rate books by, and hopefully using this all as a reason to get back to blogging. We'll see how that goes.
Anyway, today I was sitting at my desk in my new lab, feeling somewhat overwhelmed by the sheer volume of work related reading that I have to do, so I decided to take a break and find something else to read.
So I went to the blogger website. In blogs of note for the month, they have listed Women in Science, which seemed interesting... since I suppose I am one. From there, I checked out Neurosciencegirl... since I suppose I am one of those too. There I found the list below, which I thought was interesting.
This is the list of the 100 or so books most often listed as "unread" by LibraryThing users. You're supposed to bold the books you've read, underline the ones you read for school, and italicize the ones you started and didn't finish. Interestingly, blogger doesn't seem to have an underline feature, I assume because that implies that something is a link, so I'm just bolding what I've read, no matter what the reason. I'm also putting a (*) next to the ones that I own but haven't read, (**) for books that are in my digital book's library but not yet read. Here's my list:
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina**
Crime and Punishment**
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude*
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick**
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities**
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace**
Vanity Fair**
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books*
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex*
Quicksilver*
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man*
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch**
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo**
Dracula**
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility**
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist**
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune*
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere*
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners**
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed*
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame**
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield**
So a couple of things I think are slightly interesting: There are 102 books on this list, and I have read only 36 of them, (which doesn't seem like so very many). I traced the list back as many blogs as I could (turned out to be four) and 36 seems better than average. Also, I seem to be a lot less likely to start but not finish.
Of course, the other intriguing thing about this is : "Where does this list come from again? What exactly is Library Thing?" And it turns out that LibraryThing.com is a very cool little website where you can create a personal profile with all the books in your own library, rate and review them, and then connect with people that have similar taste in books or get recommendations for things to read. So I joined up, and while my library is not even sort of started yet, here it is.
So that makes this list make a little more sense to me, because it didn't seem like a real "Top 100" by any criteria I can think of, but it totally makes sense to me as the "100 books that people that really love books are most likely to have bought, be willing to admit that they own, but not gotten around to actually reading." If that's the criteria, then a list that combines classics (cult and literary) with a bunch of fairly recent popular fiction and some interesting but general non-fiction makes perfect sense. A list of books that would lead readers to think, "I really should read that..."
And by that standard, I am a pretty boring, normal reader. Because there are only about three books here that I have not at least picked up and considered at one point or another... such is life.
Anyway, I'll get internet access back on Monday, and then spend a couple of days playing with my LibraryThing bookshelf, and writing some reviews and figuring out what standards I am going to rate books by, and hopefully using this all as a reason to get back to blogging. We'll see how that goes.
Monday, August 27, 2007
The First Step...
They say that the first step is admitting that you have a problem.
I have a book problem. Really. I spend money that I really shouldn't on books, and I LOVE every single minute of it. Really.
I also love Andrew, but he is a bad influence on me. On Sunday, at the Barnes and Noble in Nashville, I bought SIX books (admittedly, one was free, but the plan had been not to buy ANY books, and instead, I bought SIX).
So now, no more, I have made a solemn oath to myself and my wallet, with Andrew and all my blog readers (all three of you) as my witness, that
I WILL NOT BUY ANOTHER BOOK UNTIL I HAVE READ AND BLOGGED TEN BOOKS.
I have even selected the ten, and they are (in no special order)
The Queen's Fool
By Philippa Gregory
500 pages
The Female Brian
By Louann Birzendine, M.D.
187 pages (excluding notes and references)
Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found
By Suketu Mehta
542 pages
The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death
By John Kelly
303 pages (excluding notes and references)
The Third Chimpanzee
By Jared Diamond
368 pages (excluding notes and references)
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
By Robert A. Heinlein
382 pages
The Princes of Ireland
By Edward Rutherfurd
770 pages
The Rebels of Ireland
By Edward Rutherfurd
863 pages
Saving Fish From Drowning
By Amy Tan
474 pages
Quicksilver
By Neal Stephenson
916 pages
That's ten books. 5,305 pages. Ten complete blog entries before I am allowed to visit Barnes and Noble again. I swear to it. (Although, I do have to admit that I am almost done with The Queen's Fool, but I still have to blog it, and updating the blog is something that I have been rather bad at... so that's a start.)
Right.
I really really really love to read.
I have a book problem. Really. I spend money that I really shouldn't on books, and I LOVE every single minute of it. Really.
I also love Andrew, but he is a bad influence on me. On Sunday, at the Barnes and Noble in Nashville, I bought SIX books (admittedly, one was free, but the plan had been not to buy ANY books, and instead, I bought SIX).
So now, no more, I have made a solemn oath to myself and my wallet, with Andrew and all my blog readers (all three of you) as my witness, that
I WILL NOT BUY ANOTHER BOOK UNTIL I HAVE READ AND BLOGGED TEN BOOKS.
I have even selected the ten, and they are (in no special order)
The Queen's Fool
By Philippa Gregory
500 pages
The Female Brian
By Louann Birzendine, M.D.
187 pages (excluding notes and references)
Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found
By Suketu Mehta
542 pages
The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death
By John Kelly
303 pages (excluding notes and references)
The Third Chimpanzee
By Jared Diamond
368 pages (excluding notes and references)
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
By Robert A. Heinlein
382 pages
The Princes of Ireland
By Edward Rutherfurd
770 pages
The Rebels of Ireland
By Edward Rutherfurd
863 pages
Saving Fish From Drowning
By Amy Tan
474 pages
Quicksilver
By Neal Stephenson
916 pages
That's ten books. 5,305 pages. Ten complete blog entries before I am allowed to visit Barnes and Noble again. I swear to it. (Although, I do have to admit that I am almost done with The Queen's Fool, but I still have to blog it, and updating the blog is something that I have been rather bad at... so that's a start.)
Right.
I really really really love to read.
Friday, January 05, 2007
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.
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.
Friday, June 02, 2006
Introduction: Readaholic
For some reason, every year, there is something about the beginning of summer that takes me, a normally avid reader, over some unclear threshold into the world of what can only be called obsessive reading. I don't know why it happens, but it has been a consistent occurrence for as long as I can remember. The trend is clear all the way back to the summer in grade school (between 3rd and 4th or 4th and 5th grades) when I reached my goal of reading 10,000 pages and earned myself some absurd number of free Subway Kids Meals from the Wethersfield Public Library's summer reading program.
More recently, the memories are more pleasant and vaguely sensual. I remember sitting in the coffee shop across from BC reading, how it was too cold in the shop and way too hot outside, and how distinctly different the act of reading there was from the work that I did that summer moving furniture. The summer before last, I read a book a day for the weeks before camp started, waking up early to read before work, eating quickly to read something at lunch, and spending full evenings in the basket chair that Nicole and I acquired mod shopping. Last summer I read for hours in my room at TFA institute, and sometimes when I could grab a free moment during the school day. My reading felt like a little island in that world of stress and insanity and transition, and I plowed through books even though I shouldn’t have had time for any of them.
This summer seems no different, and as Memorial Day passes and the weather gets hot, I find myself again turning pages compulsively, reading a book every day or at least close to it. I can't stop myself. While in the winter I sometimes fall asleep before my head even hits the pillow (or in some cases, before I even think about the pillow, while sitting up and doing something else.) In the summer, sleep escapes me until I have read for a while. Sometimes I will not sleep for hours and hundreds of pages and not notice what is happening, leaving me sluggish in the morning when I intend to run, but no more likely to make it to sleep without reading the next night.
And I love it. It’s delicious and relaxing and exciting. I get involved in the stories and the ideas and want to read more and more: more by the same author, more on the same topic, more on some tangentially related topic that is mentioned casually in a novel as a side interest of one of the characters. More, more, more.
In the past, I have tried to write journal entries about the things that I read. I want to be the kind of reader that can keep it together to write notes about all the books that pass through my hands. I had claimed the beautiful leather journal that my mother got for me in Turkey for this purpose, thinking that I would want to keep my reading notes far longer than the random thoughts that repeat in my other, personal, less enduring journals.
But writing is painfully slow, and typing is blissfully fast. The difference, especially for me, is astronomical. I wrote almost all of the entry up to this point during a single six minute task run for one of my subjects. I couldn’t come close to that writing by hand. That combined with my compulsive editing, and my tendency to be long winded, and therefore to get hand craps, leaves me thinking that despite my potential desire to have these ideas bound in lovely Turkish leather, the reality is that to get them down at all I may have to accept a more electronic medium: hence the blog.
That and part of the reason that I want to write about the books as I read them is the fact that I would like to talk about them. I would like to hear if other readers agree with me, and get suggestions as to other books that I would like. I want my reading this summer to be a less self-centric and more communal process, at least as much as reading really can be.
I don’t delude myself into thinking that I am going to have some sort of cult blog following as I write this. That would be insane, and I don’t think that I am ready for a large audience, but the act of writing about the things that I read with the intent of ANY audience will inspire me to think about them that way, and perhaps one or two of you will have something to say back, which is always cool. And even if not, and it’s all for me, so what, I do lots of writing all for me.
So here we have it. Maggie reading her summer yet again, but this time, at least keeping track of it. And we’re off.
The book list will be perpetually updated. And I do mean perpetually. Let’s see how much a girl can read when she has to work and play ultimate and study in addition to just devouring pages. I think that it will still be more than I imagine.
More recently, the memories are more pleasant and vaguely sensual. I remember sitting in the coffee shop across from BC reading, how it was too cold in the shop and way too hot outside, and how distinctly different the act of reading there was from the work that I did that summer moving furniture. The summer before last, I read a book a day for the weeks before camp started, waking up early to read before work, eating quickly to read something at lunch, and spending full evenings in the basket chair that Nicole and I acquired mod shopping. Last summer I read for hours in my room at TFA institute, and sometimes when I could grab a free moment during the school day. My reading felt like a little island in that world of stress and insanity and transition, and I plowed through books even though I shouldn’t have had time for any of them.
This summer seems no different, and as Memorial Day passes and the weather gets hot, I find myself again turning pages compulsively, reading a book every day or at least close to it. I can't stop myself. While in the winter I sometimes fall asleep before my head even hits the pillow (or in some cases, before I even think about the pillow, while sitting up and doing something else.) In the summer, sleep escapes me until I have read for a while. Sometimes I will not sleep for hours and hundreds of pages and not notice what is happening, leaving me sluggish in the morning when I intend to run, but no more likely to make it to sleep without reading the next night.
And I love it. It’s delicious and relaxing and exciting. I get involved in the stories and the ideas and want to read more and more: more by the same author, more on the same topic, more on some tangentially related topic that is mentioned casually in a novel as a side interest of one of the characters. More, more, more.
In the past, I have tried to write journal entries about the things that I read. I want to be the kind of reader that can keep it together to write notes about all the books that pass through my hands. I had claimed the beautiful leather journal that my mother got for me in Turkey for this purpose, thinking that I would want to keep my reading notes far longer than the random thoughts that repeat in my other, personal, less enduring journals.
But writing is painfully slow, and typing is blissfully fast. The difference, especially for me, is astronomical. I wrote almost all of the entry up to this point during a single six minute task run for one of my subjects. I couldn’t come close to that writing by hand. That combined with my compulsive editing, and my tendency to be long winded, and therefore to get hand craps, leaves me thinking that despite my potential desire to have these ideas bound in lovely Turkish leather, the reality is that to get them down at all I may have to accept a more electronic medium: hence the blog.
That and part of the reason that I want to write about the books as I read them is the fact that I would like to talk about them. I would like to hear if other readers agree with me, and get suggestions as to other books that I would like. I want my reading this summer to be a less self-centric and more communal process, at least as much as reading really can be.
I don’t delude myself into thinking that I am going to have some sort of cult blog following as I write this. That would be insane, and I don’t think that I am ready for a large audience, but the act of writing about the things that I read with the intent of ANY audience will inspire me to think about them that way, and perhaps one or two of you will have something to say back, which is always cool. And even if not, and it’s all for me, so what, I do lots of writing all for me.
So here we have it. Maggie reading her summer yet again, but this time, at least keeping track of it. And we’re off.
The book list will be perpetually updated. And I do mean perpetually. Let’s see how much a girl can read when she has to work and play ultimate and study in addition to just devouring pages. I think that it will still be more than I imagine.
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