Most of my reading has been pretty uninspiring recently. Mostly I think that’s because I haven’t been keeping as focused on what I’m reading since I’ve taken so much time off. I have plenty of time to read – so why don’t I just read later, I think. If I were doing much else, I’d be more focused while reading since it’s time away from working.
I don’t like where this is going, I guess this means that I read for escape rather than for some mind-nourishment reasons. Or maybe having free time brings out lazy tendencies in me.
I just dropped the book that I’d spent at least two weeks with (which was pretty good) and picked up Calvino’s The Watcher. I’ve zipped through it in two days.
Now I think I’m going to change my story. I blame habit. I was really digging Calvino when I was reading his books last year, I think that a couple of more books will charge me up and get me going again. I’m not equating speed-reading with satisfied reading, I’m saying that I go through books more quickly when I’m especially engrossed in them. Pacing feeds attention, attention feeds pacing.
Okay, I’m going to change the direction of this thing one more time. I’m looking over my bookshelf and noticing a few books that I’ve read recently, zipped through, and really enjoyed. I’m probably not doing as badly as I thought, it’s just a temporary lull.
There’s something to what I said about habit though. I just put on Meat Puppets/Too High To Die and it’s putting me in a certain frame of mind – not exactly the frame of mind I’d have while listening to it in 1994, kind of neo-1994 though.