Breaking my silence to pass on a dare:
Make a resolution to read only the books in your To Be Read stack for as long as you can in 2011. Start on New Year's Day and see how long you last.
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9 comments:
A nice-sounding notion, but not practical. Unless you read only for diversion, deciding what to read is part of a process of thought, and who can predict where that will lead?
You're much less guilt-ridden on this issue than I, obviously...
The huge number of books that I have bought on a whim, read briefly, and found less interesting than the whim that followed?
Oppresses me.
In this sense, it seems, you do fetishize books.
I do occasionally feel chagrined at how little impulse control I have at my current advanced age. But I don't (pop psych alert) project it onto the books.
More like this:
When I compare the reader of my unread books to the reader of those that I actually read, the first is an altogether more tasteful and accomplished guy.
Either you should try somrthing like the move you made in NYC years ago, when you started reading comic books again, and get happy by embracing what you actually like (and perhaps by that route finding you way eventually back to art) or accept that you are someone who likes to graze rather than gorge. There are worse fetsishes. I'm sure you could name several
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?...
Also, on a less exalted note, there's this from your sensei (SOTBWOTS, page 102:
"Reading trashy novels makes me feel I'm wasting time. It wasn't always that way. I used to have lots of time, so even though I knew they were junk, I still felt something good would come from reading them. Now it's different. Must be getting old."
Inauthenticity is always soul-destroying. How's that for a rule of thumb?
Or if not that, how about "Knowing yourself is a prerequisite of happiness"?
Mostly disagree, but not here.
Fruitless to reach for things you aren't ready for. Start from an accurate sense of where you are now, then work your way up gradually -- that's what running has taught me. The alternative is painful muscle cramps.
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