I'm trying to learn from last year and avoid weeks and weeks of slowly reading a single book. For Whom the Bell Tolls has not been a quick and effortless read. I'm keeping steadily at it, but it's not even a third read after two weeks. My pace has been about 10 pages or so a night. It's better than nothing, but that just won't do. My short book to read while reading something else radar has been up. I spotted a Rachel Cusk book on the shelf during a family trip to B&N Saturday night. I've had that in my Kindle library for months. I decided right there to pause Hemingway and pick up this slim volume for a week or so. Second Place is a fast read. I'm almost a third of the way through after a couple of days. This is my second attempt, but I'm not sure if the first try really counts. I think I read a bit on the plane on one of my trips back to Richmond last year. I was debating between a couple of books and ended up picking the other one. I've read Cusk's Outline trilogy. I would fail any test of my recollection of those books. Like so much of contemporary fiction, they are so slim and effortless that they just kind of slide over my consciousness. Maybe this one will stick a bit more given that I've read a bit of twice. We'll see.
I would be a much more successful reader if I could stay up at night. It seems like I'm dozing off every night around 10. Sometimes I rouse myself and read a few pages, but just going to bed is also a popular choice. It's hard to read books if I don't spend any time reading. It's hard to spend time reading if I'm asleep. Last week was my recovery period for the WDW Marathon. The recovery was partially physical, particularly giving my knee a chance to get back to a good point after the pounding it took on Sunday, but just not getting up early a couple of days was also part of the recovery plan. I'm shifting back into a more active mode this week. We'll see if it's sleep time or reading time once I have a few moments at the end of my day.
I did want to congratulate myself for reading a fair amount on Saturday before the marathon. There was plenty of social media activity for me to follow on the entire Marathon Weekend, but I picked up my book and read a few pages. I've realized that a big point of my reading (and fitness) goals is to regain the discipline to focus on long term goals. I look back on the effort I exerted on my MBA, law school applications, and other efforts with a bit of wonder. I always managed to find the energy to do the work that got me closer to those goals. I very much want to regain that mode of action. I got into so many bad habits during covid and living alone. These resolutions that I give myself sound kind of pointless, but they are a focus for my self-discipline and effort. That makes them worthy no matter their apparent material value.
While I'm talking about pausing books, I should mention I'm also putting an audiobook on pause. I've been dabbling in Patriot Games for a few months. I'm not sure I will finish it though. Once the endless competence of every character in those books jumped out at me, I haven't been able to just flow with the story. The book is mildly amusing, but I preferred Cardinal in the Kremlin and Hunt for Red October. I started listening to Election last night. Like Second Place, it's a short book. The audiobook is only a few hours. If all the character perspective changes were edited out it would probably be 15 minutes shorter. Podcasts are fine, but some other material would be fun to mix in on occasion. Do I really need to spend 3-4 hours a week listening to a couple of guys talk about college basketball games? Not really. An audiobook is a nice change of pace, especially when it's the same duration as a longer podcast.
