Reading: A Princess of Mars by Burroughs
Also reading: The City We Became by Jemisin
Also reading: The Face in the Frost by Bellairs
Listening to: The hum of the dehumidifier
Drinking: Lemon water
Category: reading life (Page 6 of 11)
I should really make these, like, a weekly thing…
Listening to: Macroblank on Bandcamp (I know nothing about this artist other than I really like listening to him while I work)
Reading: A Princess of Mars by Burroughs
Also Reading: Bright Lights, Big City by McInerney
Watching: Out of the Past and some other old noir (for inspiration)
Drinking: Lots of tea (iced, hot, Darjeeling, herbal)
I finished reading two books today, and I must say, I feel a great sense of accomplishment whenever I finish a book. It’s not like finishing a book is some rare occasion for me — I finish books all the time — but it still gives me great satisfaction, like I’ve really done something with my day to have finished a book.
Weirdly, I also find myself feeling very guilty when I plop down in bed and read during the middle of the day, like I’m some kind of radical or revolutionary, a la John and Yoko with their Bed Peace, just some layabout anarchist who should be working to earn her daily bread, but instead, I’m reading books and wasting time.
But then, when I finish the book, I feel as if I couldn’t have used my time any better. Finishing a book is SOMETHING. No matter how many books I finish, the satisfaction of turning the last page and closing the book will never be diminished. It’s a glorious feeling. A journey completed.
Anyway, I finished two books today, and in my defense, I had blocked off the day as a “vacation day” because I had been called for jury duty. I wasn’t selected to serve, but all that waiting before the selection process meant I could read my book, and then, when I got home and didn’t have any particular projects scheduled for the day, I opened the book back up and finished it. And then I picked up another one that I had been reading off and on, and finished that one too.
Thus, the day was a glorious success.
I’ve subscribed to his newsletter for years(?), and for years I included his excellent book How to Think as assigned reading in my AP Language and Composition course, but I’m always surprised—and delighted—when I rediscover his wisdom and insight by reading his blog.
Thanks to a shout-out from Austin Kleon, I jumped over to Jacob’s blog this morning and read for about forty-five minutes, scrolling through and dipping into the posts that looked most interesting, and reading more than half a dozen fabulous ones, from his thoughts on technology to medicine to reading to writing to politics (“small p” politics), and now I’m on fire with my own ideas and thoughts. Which is what great blogging—heck, great writing in general—often does. It opens up new trails for us to follow, new vistas to see, new tonics to imbibe. These tonics quench dry throats, give us voices to sing again.
Anyway, I hate how I forget to read some of my favorite writers, but there’s such a joy in rediscovering them too. It’s like meeting an old friend in an unexpected place. It’s not a good thing to have lost touch with this old friend, but there’s something wonderfully fulfilling about finding them again. It almost makes up for having lost touch.
Now that I’ve rediscovered Jacob’s blog, I don’t want to lose touch again. The joy in re-finding his blog has given me surprising pleasure, but there’s also the ordinary pleasure that comes from reading a good writer every day. That’s what I’m looking forward to tomorrow.
Awhile back, I started what I thought to be a regular feature of my newsletter: Books of Winter, Books of Spring, Books of…, etc.
“Books of Summer 2022” was preempted by my Kickstarter announcements, so I thought I’d return at the end of November with “Books of Autumn 2022.” Except… I have no books to recommend. It’s not that I haven’t been reading, it’s that I haven’t been reading much fantasy. I’m in a bit of a funk.
I’ve started (but not finished) quite a few novels recently, and the one novel I did finish (The House in the Cerulean Sea) was okay for what it was but not something I’m keen to recommend. It was perfectly fine, just not something I have much to say about, nor something I think needs my recommendation. It has plenty of positive buzz already. My somewhat tepid praise won’t add anything new to the pile.
And the other two books I’ve started (but not finished) are also perfectly fine. I’m sure I’ll finish them eventually. But neither book is keeping me up at night to finish a chapter, neither is tugging at my sleeve and cajoling me to read when I should be washing dishes. I have to force myself, like I’m forcing myself to take my vitamins.
This is no way for a reader to live.
I know one of the recipes for a reading funk is to read an old favorite, something that you love. For me that would be The Lord of the Rings, or The Hobbit, or maybe the Narnia series or the Prydain Chronicles, or the delightful Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell. Maybe I should go back to my old standbys. Maybe that will bring me out of the funk.
The problem is, I don’t really want to read any of these old favorites. I want something new. I started Cerulean Sea with high hopes that it would be enrapture me, excite me, stir my imagination. It was mildly diverting, but alas, it was not transcendent.
I don’t want the same old thing, I want something surprising. A love for fantasy is driven, on some level, with a love for the unusual, for exploration and discovery. I’ve been to Middle-Earth oftener than any other imaginary world, and while I love it the best, I want to see new vistas too, if I can.
I think part of my difficulty is that I’m trying to read too many things at once. I have my book club book, and my nonfiction books, and my fantasy fiction books, and my collection of Chesterton essays, and my Bradbury short story collection, and my poetry anthology, and on and on.
This approach can work if I stick to the poetry and the essays and the nonfiction. But if I want to read a novel and really enjoy it, I need to COMMIT. That means reading the novel — and only the novel — for large chunks of time. It means pushing through even when the story hasn’t grabbed me yet. It means staying faithful until the end, or until I decide the book isn’t for me and DNF it. I can’t play the field when I’m reading fiction. I need to be monogamous. Fiction is an immersive experience, so I need to dive into the depths and not come up for air.
This means making a choice. Do I go with the dark fantasy indie or the classic fantasy from the 1990s? Or do I dump them both and return to Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives, a series in which I’m two books behind? Or do I totally zag and read that Appendix N book my husband got me for my birthday?
To get out of a funk I have to make a difficult choice. I have to say “yes” to one book and “no” to many others. I have to commit, and that means I might make a bad choice. But it must be done. It’s the only way to push through. At least for me.
The reading challenge ebbed and flowed. I don’t know if I really succeeded. Some days I read more than others. Some days I fell victim to my own addiction to surfing the internet. The addiction is deep. As soon as I think I’m master of my attention, something happens to draw me back to the “abyss of Total Noise” that is scrolling the web.
What a perfect metaphor. A web. Like flies, we’re caught.
It’s not that I think the internet is a bad thing. I literally would not have met my husband or developed a career as a professional writer and editor if the internet didn’t exist. I might have met another husband or made a career as a writer in some other way, but not in the way I did. I’m grateful for the internet.
But it is a web. A vast web. And that vastness has been a double-edged sword.
Anyway, the reading challenge was a bit “meh.” I wish I had been better about carving out my reading time. But life — always life — intervenes. Children with broken arms. Emergency room visits. Power outages. Deadlines. Exhaustion.
I suppose I can try again with a new challenge, but is that just setting myself up for another failure? I also made a pledge to blog (nearly) everyday, and that has been a bust as well. So many missing days. Weeks gone by and nothing posted.
Perhaps the better thing to focus on is my persistence. Despite all these setbacks and failures and inabilities to maintain a challenge, I have a stubborn inability to give up. Even as I fail at these challenges, I keep going. Maybe there’s merit in that (or some form of insanity!).
I used an old Austin Kleon prompt today in my writer’s notebook. I can’t find anything on his blog about it, but I know I first got the idea from his writings. Here’s a link to elsewhere that explains the prompt: Spine Poetry.
So, these are the book titles sitting on my desk right now: The Sleeping Dragon, The Broken Lands, The Tolkien Reader, Maps of the Imagination, The Summer Book, The Fall of Arthur, The Once and Future King, The Lore of the Land, The Book of Idle Pleasures, Listen to the Echoes.
And here is my poem made from the titles along the spines:
Listen to the echoes:
the lore of the land,
the fall of Arthur (the once and future king),
the broken lands,
the sleeping dragon.
Maps of the imagination:
the Tolkien reader,
the summer book.
The book of idle pleasures.
