Re-reading

For the first time in, well more than I recall, I am re-reading a book. Sure I re-read plenty in school (thanks to the Jesuits, I have read Plato's Republic far more times than I would have liked), but I almost never re-read for pleasure. There are just too many good books to read to justify going back to spend time on a book I have already read. Amazingly, I justify keeping so many books, because I say I want to re-read or at least refer to them.

I am though re-reading Dan Simmon's Summer of Night, thanks to a chance conversation about the book A Winter Haunting. I had read Summer years ago and when I later read Winter, I had somehow missed that it was a sequel. Someone reminded me of it and told me it was better to read them closely. So I picked up copies of both and decided to try again.

So far I am ashamed to say that I am recalling each page, but I can't remember what is coming. Either that means the book is forgettable or I am getting forgetful. Neither is an attractive option.

The reading of a thousand page book begins with a single sentence

I am currently about halfway through George Herrings excellent From Colony to Superpower. It's a great read, useful to those new to American foreign relations and to those experienced, but I have to wonder how many people give up on it, or even more likely, never start it. With the annotated bibliography, the text is a thousand pages long. I found it a daunting to pick up despite my great love for the subject matter.

After a nice 50 page reading session, I put my book mark in place. I then closed the book to see how far along the bookmark appeared to have progressed. I might as well have read nothing as the mass of unread pages made me hastily put the book down. I also put the book in a slightly out of the way location. That way I wouldn't be constantly reminded of my lackluster progress, but I also couldn't ignore it.

Back in the 80s, A Brief History of Time was famous for being bought but unread. In that case, it was the difficulty of subject matter. I admit to not making it very far into that one (but I have the excuse of borrowing and not buying that one.) Today the problem is of reading opportunity cost. I have hundreds of books that I haven't read, many of which I probably never will read, so deciding to read a long book is also the decision to not read many other books. That's the intellectual reasoning, but the emotional reality is that I stare at all these other books and wonder what they are like.

My solution is to read the long book chapter by chapter, while also reading shorter books at the same time. It means the long book will take months to read, but it will get read.

God speed all the bakers at dawn

Lifehacker asked its readers to identify the books that changed their lives. Results are here. No huge surprises, the books fall out into religion (the Bible and perhaps Ayn Rand?,) political/philosophical (Orwell, Dawkins and Rand) and geeky (lots of sci-fi). I have nothing against any of these books and have read many of them, but it would be another thing to say they changed your life. I've always been befuddled by the notion that a book might change my life. Never had I read a book that would fundamentally change my life and send me on a course I had not intended. I suppose there is the idea of inspiration, which many of them contain, but that seems to me to be the activation of latent tendencies.

Generally speaking if someone says to me "Read this book, it will change your life," I try to avoid it reading it all costs. For one, it sounds culty. For another then I have to talk about it with them and they will try to gauge if my life has in fact changed.

Reading on a jet plane

I faced my nightmare scenario yesterday; a long (20 hour) journey with inappropriate books. Three of the four I had didn't work out. While I usually quite like Charles Stross, his Accelerando didn't do much for me. I had Dorothy Dunnett's Spring of the Ram, but I think my brain was too tired for it. I know my brain my too tired for A Consumer's Republic. I suspect I will give the last two another try. I suppose there is a reason that books are called airplane reads.

The only book that worked well in the circumstances was Charles Todd's A Fearsome Doubt. On the plus side I actually slept thanks to Benadryl. Otherwise it would have been hours spent with films of the Rush Hour 3 caliber. I didn't appreciate the fact that the United Airlines hostess taunted we in the cattle car section with the much better film selection in business class.

Escaping the reading doldrums

I in one of those reading doldrums where nothing is working. I started New Stories From the South 2007, but found that short stories weren't clicking. I also tried P.J. O'Rourke's book on Adam Smith, and while it was funny, it just wasn't hitting the reading spot. These were both library books, and for me at least, the bar is not set very high for taking these home.

With new books, I tend to be certain about a desire to read them in the next few months. As it happens it might be years, but purchasing a new book requires an urgent element for me to buy it. Used books are the chance buys, the books that are probably worth it, but may end up going back to the store. With library books I need only the tiniest hint of a desire to read the book to take it home. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. I am happy to do this, as often enough I find a gem. The downside is, I often end up with a pile of books I don't want to read, at that time at least.

Anyway, I found my groove with Thunderstruck, the follow up to Devil in White City, and Paradoxia, a autobiography of sorts by rocker-poet Lydia Lunch. So far it makes Motley Crue's The Dirt look it was written by clean living Ian McKaye. It includes a strange theory as to why the Coke bottle shape has changed over time.

Unlimited edition with an unlimited supply

Oh man, who pissed in Washington Post critic Ron Charles' Cheerios? I think he is vying for the 2007 Harold Bloom Pompous Critic Award in his piece entitled Harry Potter and the Death of Reading. He basically says you are a jackass if you like Harry Potter and then, gazing sadly at the hoi polloi, wonders why Harry Potter readers don't listen to critics who tell them to read real books. How about we send the critics to business school so they can learn how to sell.

The Death of Reading bit comes from the upcoming NEA report on the decline of reading among young people. (here is the 2004 report). The NYT has a piece about how reading among kids continues to decline despite Harry Potter. It is merely inference that Harry Potter has no effect. In order to truly know, someone would need to study Harry Potter readers and their follow on reading habits and compare it to the general population. It could be that Harry Potter readers are preventing the numbers from slipping more precipitously. Or maybe not, but what I have seen is just guess work.

Oh, and the world's least intelligent news services notes that if you read Harry Potter, you will probably dabble in witchcraft. Of course, the Onion told us this long ago.