The picture above is a shot of my nightstand. It has not been staged or altered in any way. There is no CGI. That frightening tower on the left hovers next to my accident-prone head, taunting me with its menacing tumble-terrorism threats. It has fallen on me, more than once, yet I simply build it back up bigger and taller and stronger than before. America — fuck yeah!
Those other items cowering in The Tower's shadow are utilitarian incidentals: an alarm clock, my ancient iPod and docking station, and a fancy Brookstone sound machine, a most-necessary implement in my continuing battle against insomnia.
Anyway, this isn't a humble-brag about how much I read. It's an embarrassing testament to how much I haven't read. This is my very own Island of Misfit Tomes, a ragtag assortment of publications that have been meticulously hoarded, passionately pored over in the euphoria of those initially infatuating pages, and then cruelly abandoned before I've even bent the spine (do not lecture me about bending the spine). The only misfits among the misfits are Paul Auster's "The Locked Room," shoehorned in about halfway up the pile, and "The Sound and the Fury," which is leveling out my alarm clock. I completed both long ago, but I'm reading them again for different reasons, which may or may not be documented in a future post. I'm sure there's also an US Weekly in there.
So what's my (admittedly first world) problem? There are a couple of things going on. First, I'm convinced there's some kind of attention deficit thing at play (quizzes in Cosmo serve as good barometers for that sort of thing, right?). I can't keep my interests focused on one thing for too long before I get distracted by the next shiny, pretty thing. There are many shiny, pretty things in this world, and not enough time to get to them all, yet I keep trying, because where the hell am I going anyway?
I'm also an excruciatingly slow reader. This is partly because of the distraction element. My day job as an editor has exacerbated this over the years — my eyes are always "on," perpetually scanning for typos or stylistic screwups instead of simply absorbing the content. I don't see the big picture because I'm hyperfocused on the details. Also, I think my brain is really, really tired.
Mostly, though, I can't stand the thought of missing out on anything lurking in the yellowed leaves. I love nonfiction (input! information!), but when I read litchrachure, I need to absorb every painstakingly chosen word, to be consumed by the minutiae, to forge an intimacy with the characters that would be impossible if I skipped over entire sections (or even a single word) for the sake of efficiency or speed or bragging rights to say "I read xxxx." Universities have built (and continue to build) their curricula around this "survival reading" strategy, which is total nonsense (at least in terms of reading fiction), and I had great trouble in my short foray in grad school because of it. I did what I had to do to get a Very Good Grade, and I'm sure I was exercising other long-atrophied sections of my cerebral parts (my literacy teacher insisted that my brain would fill in the gaps for me, because BRAINS), but it was frustrating and annoying and not for me.
It's comforting to know I'm not the only card-carrying member of the "slow-reading movement" (the virtues of which are more sufficiently described in this thoughtful essay by Tom Newkirk). So I guess the upshot is, I'm going to keep reading the way I like to read, even if the timetable's frustrating and I can't join any book clubs because everyone will be discussing the denouement while I'm still parsing the prologue. The Tower can continue to taunt me. It's not going anywh — AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
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