Another list! (and what I learned about lists and life from a kid who poisoned himself in Alaska; spoiler alert - not much)

Another list of highly acclaimed books showed up in one of my numerous information feeds. This list is the best novels (of the sophisticated artistic type) written this century. I've only read a few of the 100 books listed, and I haven't even heard of the vast majority of them. Contemporary literary fiction is not something I pursue with much vigor, but I'm not averse to picking up a solid literary effort of recent vintage. I've read five of the 100 books in the list. That's much lower than either of the other lists that I'm pursuing. I'm not sure this is a list that I want to pursue to completion. This is more of a source for good books to read kind of list. 

This attempt at the 21st Century Canon does have a nice feature that makes pursuing parts of the complete list a fairly realizable goal. They have the best book of the century, 12 new classics, and then the rest of the list. Reading the top 13 books isn't such a huge task. 

I've already used my new favorite way to grab new reading material, borrowing ebooks from the library, to get a couple of books from the list. I've borrowed a couple and put holds on a couple more. I actually just finished a borrowed ebook. Into the Wild. My one sentence summary, Krakhauer romanticizes Chris McCandless the same way McCandless romanticized Nature. All I could think of while reading the book were the freaks that I knew in college (the only place I would ever encounter people who take life  to such extremes) and how odd and totally out there I found them. I didn't find myself inspired by the thoughts and words of an overly intellectual kid who was conducting some crazy life experiment. I ironically comment on the conventionality of my life from time to time, but I have absolutely zero desire to engage in some kind of crazy minimalist, anti-capitalism kind of life. I'll keep plugging away at my career while pursuing an odd compulsion to read books from random lists that I find on the internet.

Pretty much every book that I read is in pursuit of checking some book off a list that I have in a Google Docs spreadsheet. Into the Wild is actually a rare departure from my pursuit of Book Shelf Zero or some internet list. I guess I'm just too goal obsessed. I look outside myself for meaning and validation rather than sitting calmly and reflecting on my various internal states to find the thing that really appeals to the deep inside version of myself. I should probably sell all my crap, abandon my family, and pursue a life of solitary wondering through the wilds of America. Sounds pretty ridiculous, no? Our current batch of wisdom peddlers would likely condone this kind of meaningless pursuit. We live in a crazy culture that imposes all kinds of crazy expectations on us, expectations that we enthusiastically embrace in pursuit of fame and fortune. The pursuit of status is a total waste of a life, but you don't have to oppose wealth and live totally outside of society to reject the pursuit of status as the central pursuit of life.

My wife read me some stuff she wrote about the objectification of men for a class she is taking. The point of her assignment was about power and how the rising objectification of men shifts the power dynamic between men and women, but it could be read as a reflection on status. Her response was all about status. A bald man is lower status than a man with a full head of hair. All the vigor and vitality suggested by a full head of hair gives an objectified man loads of sexual status. There is a reason why all those boy bands emphasize the fullness and thickness of their hair. (For the record, I am certainly on the more fully coiffed end of the spectrum for men in their early 40s, a fact I must share to ensure that I get my full credit of status.) She discussed older men's delusion that twenty somethings are still attracted to them driving the effort to maintain as full a head of hair as possible. (I will not pursue any balding remedies by the way.)  The objectified man must maintain his youth and vigor to retain the status position of his youth. These desperation these guys exude is pathetic. 

Of course the highest status goes to those who reject the expectations of cultural norms and live life on their terms. A refusal to hide a culturally defined deficit (or being flippant about having a highly desirable status position) carries a power and status all its own. Defining yourself in your terms is the essence of cool. So reading a bunch of books granted social acceptance makes me a bit of a square. My list reading compulsion is nothing more than the transformation of my life in a bunch of checklists and randomly assigned arbitrary tasks. It may look like that, but I'm really just about reading good books. Judge away if you will. I really don't care.

Drifting, not much progress

The Horse's Mouth is this year's Tender is the Night. I spent a month reading that not so very long owned book last year. I'm in the same reading dead zone right now. I'm just not making any progress on any book at the moment. I have The Horse's Mouth going, making very little progress, and The Eyre Affair (library ebook) also consuming some of my reading time. I basically did no reading over the weekend and very little this week. Life stuff is taking a good chunk of my time (spent Saturday night in a hotel and had basically zero time to read) and I've been watching baseball and football games rather than reading. My reading motivation is very much at low tide.

My motivation in general is at a pretty low ebb. I'm going to the gym out of habit more than a real desire to hit the weights, and I'm very much struggling with my marathon training. I'm getting in most of the longer runs, but I cut my long run on Saturday short (mostly to make sure we made it to DC for the Nationals game on time but I was struggling big time for most of the run) and I just flat out decided not to run on Monday morning. I was tired and my knee didn't feel all that great. I was much more consistent in my training last year. I kind of what to attribute my struggles more to the weather than any fitness or performance shortcoming. I've been greeted by muggy mornings pretty much every run. Who knows what conditions I'll be facing on Saturday morning as Florence rolls through. We've been spared a strong impact by the storms shift south, but rain and wind are still very much in the forecast. Twelve miles on the treadmill does not sound very appealing. Regardless of the conditions, I'm just not that excited to get out and run. Maybe a slower paced weekend will give me a chance to rest up and get my mind in a better place. I have to confess that I'm not bursting with optimism that this will be the case.

My motivation woes are closely tied to my long term residence in a pretty deep rut. I've been in what can best be thought of as a nice stable spot for the past few years. I've done a very good job of staying in place. My fitness, weight, and strength are all pretty much holding steady. That could be viewed as effectively resisting the eroding forces of time, but I feel like I'm just failing to really take the actions I need to get some kind of improvements in at least one of these areas of my life. I look at the scale and think that I may just be gaining muscle, but I look in the mirror and see the same of spare tire that I've been saying I want to get rid of for years. My books to read number has gotten smaller, but I don't really feel the progress. I was promoted at work at the beginning of the year, but I've been doing pretty much the same job for the last few years. It's gotten very stale.

I'm not really sure how to bump myself out of this long term equilibrium. I'm happy that I don't have a huge gut, but I'm frustrated by the lack of any positive movement towards a more trim frame. I've gotten no faster, I'm not noticeably stronger, and I still have to resist buying books. It's just all getting so old. Some cooler temperatures might make me feel faster running. Fewer family plans may allow me to get in more regular lifting workouts (which usually result in me being able to put more weight on the bar). Cutting out desserts may help me shed a pound or two. Some progress would be nice, but failure to face the inadequacy of goals like this to make me feel fulfilled may be the real problem.

These few pursuits I just highlighted have me looking for satisfaction and contentment in the future. When I lose the gut, I will be happy with my body. When I can run faster (exact speed not specified), I will be in shape. When I have read all my books, I will feel like I have really accomplished something. My life has been one long series of long term goals with some kind of promised salvation with the goal's accomplishment. Long term goals are fine, but I really need to find satisfaction and contentment with my current status. This is not the first time I've told myself that I need to find a way to focus on my current happiness rather than pursuing future joy, but I really have no idea of how to go about achieving this ideal state of satisfaction.

Long overdue update

I've started several posts updating my reading progress, but I end up getting pulled into other activities before I get a chance to finish them up and get them on the blog. Rather than going into detail about all that I've read since my last update, I will just say that I'm at 149 books to read (after a brief dip down to 148).

I spent most of August reading The Wise Man's Fear. It's a very long book. A fun and engaging read, I never felt like it was dragging despite the mountain of pages, that still took me a long time to finish. I read a couple of other books along with that one. I zipped through The Ghost Brigade to get it read before my online loan period ended. I waited three months to get that book. I didn't want to wait another 3 months to get another crack at it. I finished it on the last day of my two week loan period because I was trying to get all of Excession, my fourth Culture book, read before my vacation ended. I was very close to meeting that goal, I finished at home the day we got back. I also read a narrow philosophy book that I've had for ages. I believe I mentioned it in a previous post. I've kept thinking about Varieties of Presence weeks after finishing it up so it was a worthwhile read.

So I'm steadily working my way through my owned books while managing to avoid accumulating too many more of them. The online library loans have been an essential escape valve for the buying urge. I just finished World War Z. That's not something I would have picked up if it wasn't on that NPR list and it definitely not something that I would have purchased. The wonders of modern technology certainly have their place in an activity as ancient as reading. I have another ebook loan teed up and ready to go in my Kindle library. I may get started on that soon.

I have been reading one of my owned print books. The Horse's Mouth. I bought it at a library book sale more years ago than I can remember. It somehow made it through my book purge a couple of years ago. It's in remarkably good shape for a used library book. I suspect it was never checked out. I pulled off the library tags and it looks brand new. I am right around page 150 so I've built up enough momentum to keep plugging away until the end. It's not the best book, but it's amusing and not a particularly challenging read. It's not overly long either. That's definitely a point in its favor.

My next finished book gets me to my goal of reading 30 books this year. That either means I've read much more than I planned this year or I have been spending less time reading big, fat intimidating books this year. It's actually a bit of both. The books I have borrowed from the library have all been pretty quick reads. Those titles have added some nice bulk to my reading this year. I have also not been doing a nice job of avoiding the really nasty books on my shelf. I've finally gotten around to reading books I've owned for years and years, but I'm still slipping around the really hard stuff. Maybe later this year...