Ode to Reading
I have always been enthralled with the world of books and reading and have thus instinctively had something resembling a school-boy crush on dang-near every librarian I ever met, as you may have worked out by now. Okay, I might not use those exact words for the one or maybe two significant male librarians I encountered early on, but how strange to realize how rare males are in that role. And I can vouch for at least one female exception by encounter and another by reputation.
I started a log of my reading a while back, partly as a personal goad to make reading even more of a priority. I have found that it is also helpful to have a record of what I have read (and when) in connecting with other readers. I like having some sense of where my reading has taken me and find my reading record helpful both for my own purposes and frequently in exchanges with others. I have big-time regret that only rarely do I find time to annotate the reading records.
I started my log by poring over cryptic and likely incomplete calendar notations stretching back to 1994, the first personal reading records I know of. I have no documentation of what I recall as voracious reading in earlier years, including multiple reads of Swiss Family Robinson, an early favorite, Freedom of the Hills, junior high school obsession with SciFi but also lots of other subjects, relishing of UW bookstore visits in HS to indulge in interests beyond classroom assignments (Dos Passos! Sinclair!), and endangerment of my college academic program through auditing of multiple English classes compelling reading of Joyce's Ulysses and innumerable other classics and inspiring and spinning off more, e.g. Alexandria Quartet, none of which were suited for one supposedly seeking an engineering degree (while also dallying in the burgeoning ecology-related topics like Island Biogeography available for the savoring!)
Recent reading (e.g., "Mistakes Were Made") suggests caution in relying on memory on these sorts of things, yet I am pretty certain that the term "obsessive reader" would have been applicable back then.
It's quite likely I read more book-wise back in the sixties than I do now. But these days I try to keep a list.
And it is almost certain that there was a stretch when we had a far more fascinating obsession, namely our children, especially from 1978 to, say, 2000, though the latter date is a bit arbitrary. As Bob Seger so astutely pegs at least one of the pangs of adulthood in his great tune "Against the Wind," "what to leave in, what to leave out." No way to tell. Our life back then was pretty delightedly wrapped up in our children's activities. Actually, it still is, though they are adults now.
And what a time it was! Honestly, your President, in "Audacity," got me misty: "the ache that every parent must feel at one time or another, that desire to snatch up each moment of your child's presence and never let go - to preserve every gesture, to lock in for all eternity the sight of their curls or the feel of their fingers clasped around yours."
Indeed. An understatement. He's pretty young to be so savvy about that.
I likely read somewhat more today than I did back in the early '90's, but I am skeptical that the increase is as dramatic as limited records show. My early data are spotty at best - I wish I'd made better notes in those and earlier days, but more from the standpoint of what I read rather than how much. My research documents reading of merely 15 books in 1994, which seems implausibly low, though I'm sure I have enrichment from great times with the kids that may explain it. By contrast, in 2007 I read 94 books (personal best from only actual data - I'm sure bested in earlier years). I did not get near that number in 2008, with a total of 71. One wild-card is listening to audio-books, only a factor in the last few years. I did not listen to as many audio-books last year as in prior, and certainly was far more engaged in reading of on-line material in connection with the election (oh, and, err, perhaps blogging?). Those behavioral changes have not stopped, I find, with the election!
For illustration, my November 2008 "completed books" list, unusually canted towards non-fiction, consisted of:
My Stroke of Insight (Taylor)
remarkable account (from uniquely-informed patient's perspective) of a stroke and recovery by a brain-scientist
Standard Operating Procedure (Gourevitch and Morris)
dark account of Abu Ghraib
The Nick Adams Stories (Hemingway)
great compilation, attempting to present all the previously known (e.g., "The Killers") and several lesser-known semi-biographical Adams tales in seemingly chronological order - lent by Marshall
Look Me in the Eye (Robison)
very insightful and instructive Asberger's Syndrome sufferer's memoir
The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War (Mitchell)
great account of Brit who thought she had basis for forestalling the absurd invasion of Iraq
Wesley the Owl (O'Brien)
great animal tale - your best shot at insight on the life of an owl
bed/time/story (Robinson)
fascinating (racy and frisky) '60's memoir
I started a log of my reading a while back, partly as a personal goad to make reading even more of a priority. I have found that it is also helpful to have a record of what I have read (and when) in connecting with other readers. I like having some sense of where my reading has taken me and find my reading record helpful both for my own purposes and frequently in exchanges with others. I have big-time regret that only rarely do I find time to annotate the reading records.
I started my log by poring over cryptic and likely incomplete calendar notations stretching back to 1994, the first personal reading records I know of. I have no documentation of what I recall as voracious reading in earlier years, including multiple reads of Swiss Family Robinson, an early favorite, Freedom of the Hills, junior high school obsession with SciFi but also lots of other subjects, relishing of UW bookstore visits in HS to indulge in interests beyond classroom assignments (Dos Passos! Sinclair!), and endangerment of my college academic program through auditing of multiple English classes compelling reading of Joyce's Ulysses and innumerable other classics and inspiring and spinning off more, e.g. Alexandria Quartet, none of which were suited for one supposedly seeking an engineering degree (while also dallying in the burgeoning ecology-related topics like Island Biogeography available for the savoring!)
Recent reading (e.g., "Mistakes Were Made") suggests caution in relying on memory on these sorts of things, yet I am pretty certain that the term "obsessive reader" would have been applicable back then.
It's quite likely I read more book-wise back in the sixties than I do now. But these days I try to keep a list.
And it is almost certain that there was a stretch when we had a far more fascinating obsession, namely our children, especially from 1978 to, say, 2000, though the latter date is a bit arbitrary. As Bob Seger so astutely pegs at least one of the pangs of adulthood in his great tune "Against the Wind," "what to leave in, what to leave out." No way to tell. Our life back then was pretty delightedly wrapped up in our children's activities. Actually, it still is, though they are adults now.
And what a time it was! Honestly, your President, in "Audacity," got me misty: "the ache that every parent must feel at one time or another, that desire to snatch up each moment of your child's presence and never let go - to preserve every gesture, to lock in for all eternity the sight of their curls or the feel of their fingers clasped around yours."
Indeed. An understatement. He's pretty young to be so savvy about that.
I likely read somewhat more today than I did back in the early '90's, but I am skeptical that the increase is as dramatic as limited records show. My early data are spotty at best - I wish I'd made better notes in those and earlier days, but more from the standpoint of what I read rather than how much. My research documents reading of merely 15 books in 1994, which seems implausibly low, though I'm sure I have enrichment from great times with the kids that may explain it. By contrast, in 2007 I read 94 books (personal best from only actual data - I'm sure bested in earlier years). I did not get near that number in 2008, with a total of 71. One wild-card is listening to audio-books, only a factor in the last few years. I did not listen to as many audio-books last year as in prior, and certainly was far more engaged in reading of on-line material in connection with the election (oh, and, err, perhaps blogging?). Those behavioral changes have not stopped, I find, with the election!
For illustration, my November 2008 "completed books" list, unusually canted towards non-fiction, consisted of:
My Stroke of Insight (Taylor)
remarkable account (from uniquely-informed patient's perspective) of a stroke and recovery by a brain-scientist
Standard Operating Procedure (Gourevitch and Morris)
dark account of Abu Ghraib
The Nick Adams Stories (Hemingway)
great compilation, attempting to present all the previously known (e.g., "The Killers") and several lesser-known semi-biographical Adams tales in seemingly chronological order - lent by Marshall
Look Me in the Eye (Robison)
very insightful and instructive Asberger's Syndrome sufferer's memoir
The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War (Mitchell)
great account of Brit who thought she had basis for forestalling the absurd invasion of Iraq
Wesley the Owl (O'Brien)
great animal tale - your best shot at insight on the life of an owl
bed/time/story (Robinson)
fascinating (racy and frisky) '60's memoir
posted by Sir Gumbo at 10:25 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home