I’m completely unable to focus on listening to books, my attention completely wanders (like Sphinx but no ADHD).
Oddly, that’s one of the reasons I enjoy reading on a Kindle, the ability to look up things I don’t know/understand. I find it annoying when I’m on the Kindle and not on a network.
I only occasionally read physical books, since, like music, I prefer to carry my entire library around with me, which leads to a different problem: I have, many times, been reading a physical book and pressed and held the page on a word I wanted defined. And wondered why the definition didn’t pop up.
As time caught up to my eyeballs I became less and less tolerant of reading physical books. Long sessions often result in headaches. And if a book is good, I don’t mind long sessions.
The kindle app is a godsend from that perspective and that’s how I read the vast majority of titles now.
I do miss some aspects of physical books and I will still tackle a few a year. But there’s no doubt I would have read less and less without the electronic option.
23/24. Major Tolkien guy in my past. Still love it all but don’t spend anywhere near the amount of time reading or reading about JRRT. Middle Earth is just one of those things that for some reason occupies permanent space in my brain even if I don’t access the data very often.
Finished War & Peace yesterday. Took me about three months exactly. It was terrific. Well-timed, too, with Napolean coming out on Thanksgiving. (Movie was fine.)
The plot is triangulated on several different families and their experience of the events of 1805-1812, but Tolstoy interpolates throughout little essays more in a historical-philosophical mode. The last half of the epilogue (which is itself a 250 page book) is pure philosophy. What is power? Where does it come from? To what extent are we free, to what extent driven by necessity, etc. Written over a five-year span that encompassed much of the American Civil War, it was a take-down of the “great man” theory of history.
Have been slowly watching the BBC’s miniseries (co-starring, among a roster of recognizable faces, alien-cat-human hybrid Paul Dano) and it’s actually very faithful.
It’s kind of a monstrous feeling to eat such a colossal book. Heartily recommend to all those interested in European history, the Napoleonic wars, Russian lit, fat, funny, capacious, big-hearted novels…
Moved on last night to Kudos, the third and final volume of Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy. After that: Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, then Kazuo Ishiguro’s Artist of the Floating World–if that’s what it’s called–because a friend loaned it to me and I snubbed his last rec.
I decided to get out of my science fiction comfort zone and read some classical literature. So, after playing a video game that is steeped in Greek mythology, I’m attempting The Iliad and will be moving on to The Odyssey afterward. There are relatively new translations of both by the same author that are supposed to be a little more approachable than past translations, and although it’s still early, I’m not as painfully bored as I remember being in high school. Hoping to take another swing at some Shakespeare in the near future as well.