There was a time in my life when I was more OCD than I am now, and during that time I kept lists for practically everything. In fact, one summer I kept a list of everything I did each day, and at the summer's end I tallied those lists and combined them into a single master list of summer activities. Then I knew that I'd eaten ice cream twenty-seven times, jumped in the lake sixteen, watched fireworks once, etc. I came across this list a few years ago and had the good sense to perceive its meaninglessness--its utter dedication to form and disregard to content--and to throw it out. At the same time I threw out a list I wish I'd kept; a list of all the books I read from middle school through college. This list was more a memory aid, which I wish for more and more often as my memory gets worse and worse.
I said all of that to say that during many of those years in which the book list was kept, I read an average of eighty books per year. I would finish books like Atlas Shrugged and Infinite Jest in less than two weeks. Well, things have changed, and I spend a lot more time drinking beer now than I did when I was young, so sometimes a week passes without the turning of a single page. This has something to do with how the flow of this blog has slowed. However, I'd also like to blame some of that on this:
The pencil is included in this photograph a) for scale and b) because it's what I use to prop the pages open so I don't throw my back out holding them apart manually.
This is Joseph McElroy's Women and Men, and I've been reading it since last I posted. I'd tell you where my bookmark is if it weren't so embarrassing. Let's just say I'm closing in the end of the first sixth.
In any case, as a kind of breather, I began this book this week:
I plan to say more about it later, but you're welcome to read some first impressions of it by clicking here.
Just so you know, Women and Men isn't bad or dull, it's just so heavy that my commute to the coffee shop is now forty minutes instead of ten, so I barely have time to read before I have to come slog back home.
