Reading

I’m getting all into reading lately.  I should probably clarify that: I’ve always been a big reader, but since I spent the bulk of the last decade in school, my reading-for-pleasure train kind of got derailed.  While I’ve never been a fast reader—nor do I want to be—I was always a steady, consistent one, moving from book to book to book, always reading something, always moving forward.  Now I’m still always reading something, but my forward movement has been awfully slow.  That bothers me.

Things got in the way, legitimately got in the way.  School, as I said.  A thousand-mile move away from all things familiar.  That creeping bout of depression I had last year (all better, Ms. H!).  Current affairs.

That last one is bigger than it should be.  I was one of those people who got all involved in politics this past election.  I cared.  I worked hard.  I—okay, yeah, I wanted change.  Now I see I’m not going to get it, or at least the kind of change I wanted, and that frustrates me no end.  I’m becoming really cynical about the whole political process.  I listen to these idiots—you know, I’m stopping right here, because this is what happens.  I begin the litany of what’s wrong, what’s not being fixed to my liking, and I get all in a lather, all upset.  That leads to my surfing around the Internets to find more information on that topic, to read bills pending on it, to email my senators which is a totally pointless task because they don’t flipping care.  I mean, one of them is Ben Nelson.  I emailed him a while back about confirming Dawn Johnsen to the Office of Legal Counsel, and he emailed me back to assure me he shared my concerns about federal funding for abortion.   Not only are Ben and I not on the same page, we’re not even in the same library.

So.  I’m done with that business.  I will keep abreast of current events, but I won’t delve into them.  Instead, I’m going to focus on reading all the good writing that’s out there.  I’m deleting all but a couple political sites from my NetNewsWire feed list and replacing them with feeds from sites like Bookslut and The Millions and with blogs devoted to reading and writing. I want to read the books the big publishers aren’t necessarily embracing—short story collections, literary journals, narrative nonfiction, books from small, independent presses.  Books like these.

So this is what I’ll devote the bulk of my time to:  writing, reading and, if all continues to go well, teaching.  It seems I’m moving toward a life more and more centered on the written word, and it feels like coming home.

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