I can't finish a book. I've started seven in the past couple months and I'm no more than halfway through each of them. The last book I finished was American Gods; before that, The Art of Fielding. I binge-read both. So basically I can't find a happy medium s.t. I can read a book cover-to-cover without spending every spare moment reading so I'm finished in a week. My attention span is tiny and my memory is even worse. I worry about what digital nativity has done to me-- to all of us. Send help. lil flagamuffin Sidenote: when is bl00 back? I miss the old bastard.
I enjoyed The Art of Fielding - even though some of the plot was preposterous. Let's look for a minute what is involved in reading a book: - The active engaged world of longing has to back off in order for a human to read a book. - You need a motivation besides the vague feeling that reading is good for you. - You generally have to be solitary. Everything else is distracting. There might be something more immediately satisfying or fun or important to do. - You have to really want to read this book. The things going on in the book have to be more interesting than the things going on elsewhere. No wonder no one is reading. My students don't read. I was once teaching in a maximum security prison school for kids 11-16 (between gigs teaching in a community college). Regarding reading, the only difference between the college kids and the prison kids was that the college kids could probably read if they had to. It helps to find really fabulous fiction that you can't wait to get back to. If you're not hooked by (pick arbitrary # of pages), then move on. As for The Art of Fielding, I found the beginning confusing but by the end of the third chapter, I was hooked, so I'm glad I stuck with it. My only suggestion is this: (and most of hubski disagrees with me): Read with a highlighter. Highlight really great lines. Write the odd note in the margins. This provides a bit of the physical engagement, plus you can find and quote the lines to people. If there are no great lines within the first 50 pages then something is wrong.
As b_b or someone said over in the New Yorker thread about multitasking and internet access and tabs fucking up our reading, I don't really get it. "Digital nativity" is a good phrase, but it means different things to each of us. To me it means I can read even more. To most, apparently, it means being so overwhelmed you don't read anything except Facebook posts. I misapprehend how one goes from the former to the latter. It also doesn't seem like a bad thing to spend every spare moment reading -- depending how you define spare moment. I bet your memory isn't that poor, and clearly your attention span is fine when you're interested in something, if you couldn't put down Gaiman. And people change. When I was 15, I had serious trouble reading nonfiction, because there was so much great fiction in the world that I hadn't yet read, and it was easy. Like, Wheel of Time was easy in the typical sense of mowing through 100 pages of bad prose in an hour, but also Kafka was comparatively easy, because it was fantastical. So it was fun for 15-year-old me. Now I'm about even on my pursuit of hard Nature Magazine nonfiction and what b_b aptly called pleasure reading: fiction, pop stuff and biographies -- the Lay's chips of content. Maybe you will experience something similar. This is a great subject, though, because I really have no idea what's going on in the minds of my peers who only read a couple books a year (and America as a whole, which is spiraling into this mindset). My roommate has been trying and failing to reread Harry Potter for six months. At what point is "the internet" simply not an adequate excuse? And what does that even mean? It isn't homogenous. I am never the sort of person to recommend spreadsheet approaches to this sort of thing, but maybe you should try something along the lines of this. Keep a record, or whatever. My record was just a notepad file with the titles. But the willpower still has to come from somewhere. I dunno. lil's the damn teacher. -- What are the seven books? Be careful what you wish for.Sidenote: when is bl00 back? I miss the old bastard.
Now I'm about even on my pursuit of hard Nature Magazine nonfiction and what b_b aptly called pleasure reading: fiction, pop stuff and biographies -- the Lay's chips of content. Maybe you will experience something similar. Really appreciate this perspective and your advice. Thanks, flags. 1. Melville - Moby Dick 2. Keizer - Privacy 3. Joyce - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 4. Heinrichs - Thank You For Arguing 5. Zinn - A People's History of the United States 6. Vonnegut - If This Isn't Nice, What Is? 7. Asimov - Foundation (#hubskiliterarything#) (Tag broke again. Am I doing something wrong? mk forwardslash)I bet your memory isn't that poor, and clearly your attention span is fine when you're interested in something, if you couldn't put down Gaiman. And people change. When I was 15, I had serious trouble reading nonfiction, because there was so much great fiction in the world that I hadn't yet read, and it was easy. Like, Wheel of Time was easy in the typical sense of mowing through 100 pages of bad prose in an hour, but also Kafka was comparatively easy, because it was fantastical. So it was fun for 15-year-old me.
I didn't remember Foundation was one of the hubski mailed books. Great. It should be treasured. Complexity, I think that project should continue and expand -- but I'm selfish for wanting that; it stems from my desire to receive books in the mail, though I've read all the books currently in circulation. If you think of a way to broaden the scope that doesn't put all of the work on you, I'm all in. I wish there was more general enthusiasm.