05.04.09
The Source of the Problem
Here are the books I’m currently in the middle of reading:
- Postern of Fate, Agatha Christie
- Bass Cathedral, Nathaniel Mackey
- Darkborn, Alison Sinclair
- Nudge : improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness, Richard Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein
- Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, Judith Martin (3rd time through)
- We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson (4th or 5th time through)
- Confessions of an Eco-Sinner, Fred Pearce
- Nine Greek Dramas, Harvard Classics Series (specifically, The Bacchae by Euripides)
- Second Treatise of Civil Government, John Locke
Clearly, I’ve gone insane.
I want to read all most of them through to the end, but the difficult ones get set aside in favor of the mental equivalent of instant pudding. Or, in the case of the two re-reads, mental chicken corn chowder — reasonably nutritious, and so familiar and comforting.
Any advice on a plan of attack would be most helpful.
02.05.09
Something what rose from the dead
So, new year, new beginnings.
Along with some clear-eyed reflection on the previous year: to wit, my writing style and this format were not working out well together. I dearly love picking literature apart, and while I enjoyed everything I wrote during the first half of last year, I realize now they were all too long in the writing and far far too long in the reading.
So, a new plan emerges: about one book a week (which is all the faster I can read them), with a maximum word count in mind. Film and music reviews as time allows.
I also created a plan for reading this year: an equal number of “junk food” books (mostly in the form of paperback mysteries), literary novels, and non-fiction. There will be a break in the routine over the summer to work on my remedial education in childhood classics.
A secondary goal is to write something worth bragging about, and then brag the hell out of it. While I enjoy the process of sorting out my thoughts about a book, I’d like even better to have a chance to discuss books with more than one other person. Which I’m 99% sure is the current readership total ’round here.
So, after a few posts to catch up on what I’ve read so far in 2009, you’ll see one book each week, discussion strongly encouraged.
