Tag: reading

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I had a long list of books I wanted to read this year, and now that it’s November, I’ve become acutely aware that I’ve only read a few of them.

I can’t feel too bad about it, though, because one of those books I’ve been reading is Les Misérables, complete and unabridged…all 1200+ pages of it…and I’m writing commentary on it. Even when I first read it as a high school student, back in 1992, it took me several months.

It is taking me a lot longer to read this time around. I started it back in January, and I’m about three-quarters of the way through now. At first I thought it was just a matter of time.

At first I thought it was a matter of reading time. Between having a family, a full-time job, time-consuming hobbies and of course the constant temptation to look at Facebook or Twitter or Feedly or something else, I’m down to reading during my weekday lunch hours and that’s about it.

On the other hand, back in high school, I was a student. I had homework, extracurricular activities, and lots of reading for school.

I don’t think the commentary slows down the process too much (except that it does take up time on the weekends when I could be reading), but the fact is…

I actually have made a sizable dent in that reading list. And some of those books have been immense themselves: A Memory of Light (The Wheel of Time conclusion by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson), A Turn of Light (Julie Czerneda), The Windup Girl (Paolo Bacigalupi, not terribly long, but incredibly dense), plus new books by Robert J Sawyer and Seanan Maguire, a bunch of non-fiction…

Looked at that way, I don’t feel quite so bad, either for not having Les Misérables finished or for not having finished all the other books I wanted to read.

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Bad idea of the day: “I’ll be back before the rain starts again. No need to bring my umbrella.”

I’m sure you can see where this is going.

I actually would have made it if I hadn’t decided to finish re-reading The Briar King. Three pages from the end — WHOOSH! Instant cloudburst!

So I finished the book, zipped the full-sized hardcover into my jacket, and proceeded to run from Coffee Bean to the parking structure, pausing under overhangs when I found them. There’s a surprising lack of shelter at the Irvine Spectrum, not counting the stores themselves. It wasn’t until I got to the structure that I realized I’d been running with a coffee cup in my hand.

Amazingly enough, even though I got soaked, I managed to keep the book dry!

(Reposted from LiveJournal.)

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It turns out that in the digital age, the average American reads three times as many words today as thirty years ago.

Medal of Honor recipient Ed Freeman has been co-opted by a political disinformation campaign. Remember: any time you receive a political email that asks you to forward it to everyone you know, check the facts first!

(Both via This Is True)