Sunday, January 30, 2011
Compared to my contemporaries I read slowly, or at least it seems that way to me. Matt Bell is on book #13 for 2011. I'm still on book 3. I don't know what other writers are publicly counting out their reading lists. I'd be curious. Others within my physical proximity I know read pretty fast. It's not like I'm reading particularly long books, either. I'm reading Robert Coover's Ghost Town, which finishes up within 147 pages. I know how to read faster; I had to for graduate school. But if I really want to soak up a book, I have to take my time with it. I know every reader reads his own way, but how the hell do some of you get it done so quickly? Maybe it's because I can really only read what I want to read on my own before I go to bed? I have stuff to read for my classes. Sometimes I get to assign reading that I would normally want to be reading in my free time, but not usually. That's one of the things that sucks about my place of employment. But that's beside the point. I spend the rest of my day writing and getting things prepped for class or grading. What about everyone else? Are you all setting more time aside for reading during the day?
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7 comments:
I know what you mean about soaking up a book too: There will be slower patches of reading for me ahead, where I'm either re-reading something, or dipping into too many books to finish anything, or else where my work editing will slow me down--when I'm in full book-editing mode at Dzanc, I read a lot less fiction, because I'm worn out by words by the end of the day. Right now though, I've spent most of my free time reading, which only makes me more excited to read more, and so on.
When I get to a point where I'm only really reading right before bed, that tends to slow me way down, because I'm often too tired to go too long.
Yeah, I re-read Pricksongs and Descants, which was what put me in the Coover mode, and I hadn't yet read Ghost Town. It's awesome, BTW--in my opinion, far better than a lot other of Coover's work.
My editing work slows me down, too. Of course, I'm not counting that as things I read, if I'm keeping a log (which I am, but in longhand, not online or anything).
Since I've been following you on FB, I know that you're getting some serious writing done recently, too. So it's impressive that you're able to get so much reading and writing done at the same time. I'm getting a lot of writing done, but the reading takes longer, since I'm devoting more time to the former.
I have a stack of books to attack, and I fear it'll be 2025 before I can catch up to stuff that's published in 2010!
God bless you for admitting you're a slow reader. Me, too. I have little time during the day, and what I have, I mostly devote to writing rather than reading. I read a few pages on the weekend. That's not as it should be.
The balancing of writing vs. reading--specifically having to choose one or the other--seems a difficult place to be in. If I'm not reading, I struggle to write. It's one of the ways I refuel and refresh, and I hit the wall a lot faster if I haven't been reading.
I generally try to write my own fiction as soon as I get up in the morning, and then--even if I don't get to read during the day--to read as the last thing I do before bed. It doesn't always work out that way, but when it does, it seems a good way to live: great words by other writers, then dreams, then my attempts to join those writers, to match their ambition and ability. I can't do one without the other, at least not very well, and I'm lucky to be in a place right now where I'm able to spend some time on each.
One thing I'll say about keeping a reading log: It makes you want to read more. You feel accountable, in the same way that tracking anything makes you feel.
Yes, keeping a reading log is fun, also a good critical exercise. I think I'm in the same place in terms of reading and writing. I read everyday, also at the very least before bed. That's one reason why I read slowly. I have so much to do during the day that I have to read before bed, and then I start nodding off--if I'm not having trouble sleeping that night. Actually, insomnia has allowed me to get some tremendous reading done, once three novels in one night. Well, I started the third (Tristram Shandy, so I obviously wasn't going to get that finished between the set and rise of the sun).
Sometimes I don't want to be reading when writing (I mean in close temporal proximity), as I don't want another writer's tone and rhythms working their way into my own prose. Or at least it used to be that way. That's less frequently a problem these days.
There are so many books I want to read, I wish I read faster so I could get to them all.
I read slower than you do, Jamie. No worries there. Will I be seeing you this week?
yeah man, as long as the snow doesn't keep them from landing planes at Reagan on Thursday, I'll be getting there by noon.
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