Entry: The Thirty-Fifth-- Ringing In the New Year
The strangest thing happened to me this past week.
I started reading. Again. Not just newspapers, magazines, and online web journals either-of course I never stopped reading those-but books, actual, real-life, printed books, with hundreds of pages, complex ideas, and only a minimum of pictures! I’ve found this to be the incredible novelty. Picture me, Alex, your good friend Alex, sitting in his room for minutes on end, poring over some great literary masterpiece, firmly dedicated to this intellectual pursuit, not because of any academic deadline, but because he wants to! Reading for pleasure! What an idea!
For you see, I’ve never been one to romanticize the notion of reading. I’m not one of those people who comes home for winter break, and says to himself: “You know what I’ve been neglecting lately? My reading! I’m definitely going to read some good books this break!” (And I know there are those of you who do this) For the past five or ten years*, I haven’t really bothered to read for pleasure, and that hasn’t bothered me one bit. Book-reading has been a nice way to pass the time on long car trips or in doctors’ waiting room, but hasn’t been a satisfying activity in its own right. Suddenly, that seems to have changed. I’m reading books!
Well, a book. I’ve read a book so far, and to be perfectly honest, it wasn’t even a particularly good book. (Cue impromptu book review). Stephen Jay Gould has some interesting things to say about statistics, evolution, and the nature of life on this planet, but unfortunately he seems convinced that his whole audience is a bunch of Homo Stupiduses** with all the attention span of a unicellular eukaryotic organism that never took a high school science course. I swear, his publisher must’ve been paying him on a per-word basis, so often does he repeat his same basic, simple ideas over and over and over again in Full House. I had to keep checking myself to make sure I wasn’t rereading a previous chapter. Overall, despite an extended section on the death of .400 hitting in baseball, Stephen Jay Gould’s Full House (Three Rivers Press, 1996) failed to entertain me even as much as the television show of the same name. Next time I’m tempted to read a book by this paleontologist, I think I’ll turn on Nick at Nite instead.
But that’s beyond my point. What was amazing was, even though I didn’t particularly like this book, I finished reading it. Once I had started it, I felt compelled to read it through to the end. And once I had finished it, I wanted more. More books to read! Which brings me, finally, to the very-near-so-close-you-can-almost-touch-it-past, also known as the present-time-of-just-a-little-while-ago, or alternatively, the inverse future-wherein, I knew I really wanted to read more. The only question of course was: what?
The options seemed near endless. My bookshelves are littered with dozens of discarded gifts from Christmases and birthdays past, deemed too potentially entertaining to be consigned to yard-sale boxes, yet too boring to actually read. Perhaps one of these would suddenly appeal to me in my newfound literate state? I know The Boys of Summer is supposed to be a classic. Then there are the multitude of books occupying my brother’s room, spilling off his bookshelf and onto his floor and desk, worn and wrinkled from actual reading. That was where my last read previous to Gould (a Christmas present, given to me by my uncle) came from. I couldn’t even think about going to the library, for all the vast, paralyzingly large selection that they have.
Then it hit me. Why should I merely choose a book that I might enjoy reading, when really, just by choosing a certain book, I could accomplish so much more? I could alter my interests so as to ingratiate myself with proponents of today’s popular culture. I could standardize my intellectual experience to conform to that of my more normalized peers. I could right an (apparently) horrible, disgusting, unimaginably awful oversight of mine, many years standing, that (supposedly) threatens my status as a respectable human being. And with any luck, I could get a certain person to stop flicking me or snapping at me every time my ignorance of said book comes up in conversation***. All by choosing to read this one special piece of literature! In light of all these facts, how could I say no?
So here I am: staring down my family’s old and yellowed copy of J.R.R Tolkein’s Fellowship of the Ring. It’s big. It’s long. It’s full of words, not pictures. And there are two more volumes that come after it. This task isn’t going to be easy, but I’ll fight my way through the adversity, just like I’m sure Gandalf and Orlando Bloom and all the gay hobbit-thingies must have done. There’s only 527 pages between me and destiny. Wish me luck. I’m headed in****.
*To be fair, I should note that between the ages of three and eight or so, I read voraciously. So in a way, the last few years have just been the Law of Averages kicking in
**Or Homo Stupidi, if you prefer
***Happy Birthday Emily! I hope you enjoy this part of your birthday present :)
****Expect updates every few days or so on my progress, too. I’m sure you all know I’d never do something ridiculous like read this book if I didn’t expect it to provide good fodder for further LiveJournaling...
I started reading. Again. Not just newspapers, magazines, and online web journals either-of course I never stopped reading those-but books, actual, real-life, printed books, with hundreds of pages, complex ideas, and only a minimum of pictures! I’ve found this to be the incredible novelty. Picture me, Alex, your good friend Alex, sitting in his room for minutes on end, poring over some great literary masterpiece, firmly dedicated to this intellectual pursuit, not because of any academic deadline, but because he wants to! Reading for pleasure! What an idea!
For you see, I’ve never been one to romanticize the notion of reading. I’m not one of those people who comes home for winter break, and says to himself: “You know what I’ve been neglecting lately? My reading! I’m definitely going to read some good books this break!” (And I know there are those of you who do this) For the past five or ten years*, I haven’t really bothered to read for pleasure, and that hasn’t bothered me one bit. Book-reading has been a nice way to pass the time on long car trips or in doctors’ waiting room, but hasn’t been a satisfying activity in its own right. Suddenly, that seems to have changed. I’m reading books!
Well, a book. I’ve read a book so far, and to be perfectly honest, it wasn’t even a particularly good book. (Cue impromptu book review). Stephen Jay Gould has some interesting things to say about statistics, evolution, and the nature of life on this planet, but unfortunately he seems convinced that his whole audience is a bunch of Homo Stupiduses** with all the attention span of a unicellular eukaryotic organism that never took a high school science course. I swear, his publisher must’ve been paying him on a per-word basis, so often does he repeat his same basic, simple ideas over and over and over again in Full House. I had to keep checking myself to make sure I wasn’t rereading a previous chapter. Overall, despite an extended section on the death of .400 hitting in baseball, Stephen Jay Gould’s Full House (Three Rivers Press, 1996) failed to entertain me even as much as the television show of the same name. Next time I’m tempted to read a book by this paleontologist, I think I’ll turn on Nick at Nite instead.
But that’s beyond my point. What was amazing was, even though I didn’t particularly like this book, I finished reading it. Once I had started it, I felt compelled to read it through to the end. And once I had finished it, I wanted more. More books to read! Which brings me, finally, to the very-near-so-close-you-can-almost-touch-it-past, also known as the present-time-of-just-a-little-while-ago, or alternatively, the inverse future-wherein, I knew I really wanted to read more. The only question of course was: what?
The options seemed near endless. My bookshelves are littered with dozens of discarded gifts from Christmases and birthdays past, deemed too potentially entertaining to be consigned to yard-sale boxes, yet too boring to actually read. Perhaps one of these would suddenly appeal to me in my newfound literate state? I know The Boys of Summer is supposed to be a classic. Then there are the multitude of books occupying my brother’s room, spilling off his bookshelf and onto his floor and desk, worn and wrinkled from actual reading. That was where my last read previous to Gould (a Christmas present, given to me by my uncle) came from. I couldn’t even think about going to the library, for all the vast, paralyzingly large selection that they have.
Then it hit me. Why should I merely choose a book that I might enjoy reading, when really, just by choosing a certain book, I could accomplish so much more? I could alter my interests so as to ingratiate myself with proponents of today’s popular culture. I could standardize my intellectual experience to conform to that of my more normalized peers. I could right an (apparently) horrible, disgusting, unimaginably awful oversight of mine, many years standing, that (supposedly) threatens my status as a respectable human being. And with any luck, I could get a certain person to stop flicking me or snapping at me every time my ignorance of said book comes up in conversation***. All by choosing to read this one special piece of literature! In light of all these facts, how could I say no?
So here I am: staring down my family’s old and yellowed copy of J.R.R Tolkein’s Fellowship of the Ring. It’s big. It’s long. It’s full of words, not pictures. And there are two more volumes that come after it. This task isn’t going to be easy, but I’ll fight my way through the adversity, just like I’m sure Gandalf and Orlando Bloom and all the gay hobbit-thingies must have done. There’s only 527 pages between me and destiny. Wish me luck. I’m headed in****.
*To be fair, I should note that between the ages of three and eight or so, I read voraciously. So in a way, the last few years have just been the Law of Averages kicking in
**Or Homo Stupidi, if you prefer
***Happy Birthday Emily! I hope you enjoy this part of your birthday present :)
****Expect updates every few days or so on my progress, too. I’m sure you all know I’d never do something ridiculous like read this book if I didn’t expect it to provide good fodder for further LiveJournaling...