d e t a i l s

  READING   READING NOW  
   
  i used to read one book at a time. i used to read that book in a very regimented manner, like fifteen or twenty five pages a day, depending on how simple or dense the writing. i used to set a schedule and track my progress making it so i knew when i should be done with the book and if i completed the book as expected. sometimes i finished on time, and other times, i never finished at all.

the never finishing at all business bothered me. like a lot. i found that a slow moving or not right for this moment book could stall my reading, all my reading. i knew changing the book might clear the block but consequences loomed. this is the ocd side of me. while this quirk sometimes debilitated me, other times, lots of times, my quirk helped me over many of life's saw horses. i needed this to be one of those times.

so, i made a small tweak to my reading routine (somewhere along this journey, i stumbled upon the bionic power of small properly-placed tweaks). instead of focusing on one book, i now read four - six books at a time. and instead of reading in a genre rotation like i once did (e.g. fiction, history, literature, non-fiction, psychology, fluff, repeat), i read all genres at once. and instead of reading for a set amount of pages per day, i read for a set amount of time, thirty minutes. when the reading window comes up, i set the timer, pick one of the books from the currently being read stack, open to the bookmarked page and collapse into another person's world and experience.

now when i stall, i stall for bigger, more meaty causes, the sort of things one should set their book down for. not just because the lead character in the book blows or the author and i aren't jiving at the minute. this i can live with.
  Stranger in a Strange Land
Robert A. Heinlein

Wherever You Go There You Are
Jon Kabat-Zinn

Bleak House
Charles Dickens

Stumbling on Happiness
Daniel Gilbert

Endurance: Shackletons' Incredible Voyage
Alfred Lansing

Mindset
Carolyn Dweck

 



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The Golden Compass
Phillip Pullman
03.2008

the best thing about this story is something someone informed me when they saw me reading it. they said that christian zealots were protesting this book. i looked at the cover making sure we were talking about the same text and asked if they were mistaken. nope. they were sure they were right. i can't even imagine what would happen if these religionist actually read more. i think they'd have a full coronary if they knew literature existed that was more chilling and threatening than harry potter and other selections from borders' best-seller cardboard stand.

as for this though, i thought it was big fun. and given that the star of the saga is a young girl, i'm excited for when bella will read it because the daring and chippy heroine will surely thrill my daughter's young mind. the curiously tweaked world in compass is mysterious and magical, reminding me of myst island more than anything else. the story is fast and flowing, ending with a near-literal cliff-hanger. great and fluffy stuff.

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