BOOKS/TIME = 1
Recent controversy regarding the ways in which people spend their free time got me thinking: am I reading enough?
Let's set aside the question of, "reading enough for whom, exactly" right now. Let's just agree that there is some inherent amount of reading that a literate, adult, working-class American should be able to maintain, even though he has every right to choose to watch television, or lift weights, or build model airplanes instead. How much reading should I be able to do, given my fairly limited abilities?
I've been pondering a gradual change in my reading habits. Way back when, in my high school days, I would often be reading several books at once. Since I was required to read certain assigned books for school, and since I also read for pleasure, I had to develop this skill (if one could call it that) if I wanted to have fun and pass my classes, or vice versa.
Even up to the point when I dropped out of college, I was still often working my way through two or three books at a time. People would aver that they didn't understand how I could possibly be reading a book for an hour or two, then put it down, then pick up another, and etc. I didn't see a problem, as long as the books were very different.
I developed the habit of checking out several books from the Library at once, reading them all concurrently, and returning them at the same time. Now, I had stopped going to the Library for a few years; but, recently I've renewed my card, and picked up roughly where I left off.
The problem is, however, that I'm finding it a bit difficult to read two or more books at once. During my time exile from the Library stacks, I got swept up in a great book-purchasing dervish. Not having the financial muscle to buy more than one book at a time, I settled into a buy-one-book-read-one-book routine without even knowing it. If I bought another book while I was in the middle of reading one I had acquired earlier, it spelled disaster for that earlier one.
Yes, I'd eventually go back and finish it, as my finances could not hope to match my appetite (I did a lot of re-reading as well); but it would be out of a sense of duty, not curiosity or joy, and I would often have to start over to be able to figure out what was going on.
I know that I've changed. What I'm unsure of is whether or not my multi-book skills have just gotten rusty, or if my brain has softened over the years, thereby causing my current one-book-at-a-time strategy to emerge. Or, maybe, I'm reading these books more deeply than I did in my break neck-paced youth, requiring my full attention be brought to bear on whatever it is I'm reading at the moment? (Since that third possibility is a little too self-serving, I'm willing discount it completely.)
Let's set aside the question of, "reading enough for whom, exactly" right now. Let's just agree that there is some inherent amount of reading that a literate, adult, working-class American should be able to maintain, even though he has every right to choose to watch television, or lift weights, or build model airplanes instead. How much reading should I be able to do, given my fairly limited abilities?
I've been pondering a gradual change in my reading habits. Way back when, in my high school days, I would often be reading several books at once. Since I was required to read certain assigned books for school, and since I also read for pleasure, I had to develop this skill (if one could call it that) if I wanted to have fun and pass my classes, or vice versa.
Even up to the point when I dropped out of college, I was still often working my way through two or three books at a time. People would aver that they didn't understand how I could possibly be reading a book for an hour or two, then put it down, then pick up another, and etc. I didn't see a problem, as long as the books were very different.
I developed the habit of checking out several books from the Library at once, reading them all concurrently, and returning them at the same time. Now, I had stopped going to the Library for a few years; but, recently I've renewed my card, and picked up roughly where I left off.
The problem is, however, that I'm finding it a bit difficult to read two or more books at once. During my time exile from the Library stacks, I got swept up in a great book-purchasing dervish. Not having the financial muscle to buy more than one book at a time, I settled into a buy-one-book-read-one-book routine without even knowing it. If I bought another book while I was in the middle of reading one I had acquired earlier, it spelled disaster for that earlier one.
Yes, I'd eventually go back and finish it, as my finances could not hope to match my appetite (I did a lot of re-reading as well); but it would be out of a sense of duty, not curiosity or joy, and I would often have to start over to be able to figure out what was going on.
I know that I've changed. What I'm unsure of is whether or not my multi-book skills have just gotten rusty, or if my brain has softened over the years, thereby causing my current one-book-at-a-time strategy to emerge. Or, maybe, I'm reading these books more deeply than I did in my break neck-paced youth, requiring my full attention be brought to bear on whatever it is I'm reading at the moment? (Since that third possibility is a little too self-serving, I'm willing discount it completely.)
