Over the years, I made compromises (my wife insisted on bookshelves to replace that coffee table, for example) but I never changed my ways. My system became more sophisticated, but the basic principle of moving from one book to the next did not change. One pile became two, then three, and eventually I had a long coffee table covered with nothing but book piles. The problem came when I entered graduate school, moved to a city with excellent used book stores (London, Ontario) and started to become more broadly curious about literature, theory, philosophy, and just about everything else, than I ever had been before. It took me a little longer to finish books, but I quite enjoyed this too when I really liked them, I wanted to savour them, and when I didn’t like them, I was soon able to switch to something else. This had the benefit of keeping my reading fresh, never getting bogged down in one thing, and allowing me to continually be surprised. Then, I would repeat the same process in reverse. I would read a chapter from the top book, place it in a new pile beside the first one and repeat until the pile was empty. When I was an undergraduate student, I kept a pile of books beside my bed. I have never been the sort of person who could read just one book at a time. When Dorian suggested that I consider writing a review post on my reading for the year, I was keen to share some of my thoughts, but also felt the need to preface it with a confession of sorts, so here goes: Enjoy! (I couldn’t help but add a few editorial comments along the way.) Not only did he write about his favourites, he also described his idiosyncratic reading project. I invited my friend and sometime EMJ contributor, Nat Leach, to write about the highlights of his year in reading.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |