/karen/

Better read than dead

Tuesday, 24 April, 2007

I meant to answer one of the comments on my blog:

I was just thinking that I have this reading to do, and I used to love reading as a child ... and find every moment to spare, but now I really struggle to sit down and read ( well i don't like it anymore?), but then I see your excellent reading progress on the right and wonder if there's anything you do to help you get through all the things u want to read?

or do you like balance out heavy and light books?

—but of course I haven't gotten around to it until now. So let me do so in the 10 minutes I have while my dinner is cooking.

With reading books (as opposed to the reading I do at work or the reading of the SMH or blog-reading or whatever else), I like to read in bed before I go to sleep. Sometimes I read during lunch but it's a little hard to juggle a book and read, and not get food on the book (especially if it's a graphic novel and especially if it's someone else's graphic novel). If the book has hooked me, I'll read it at every available opportunity—even while cooking.

I tend to read things I want to read. Most of the books on my Current blog have been books I really wanted to read—the latest Diana Wynne Jones novel, an old favourite like Fifteen by Beverly Cleary, a Christmas present from my sister- and brother-in-law (Here, There Be Dragons). You'll probably notice that I am not a hugely adventurous reader; most of my selections are one or more of the following:

• fiction;
• children's fiction or teen fiction;
• fantasy;
• science fiction (very occasionally);
• graphic novels/comics.

I very rarely read non-fiction and when I do, it has to be something I'm currently obsessing about. At the moment, it's books about children of divorce (and related issues, so I've got The Good Marriage by Judith Wallerstein waiting to be devoured). Before it was stuff about being Asian, stuff about writing, stuff about comics, the occasional Christian book, etc. (Dinner's ready. Better wrap this up.)

Also very rarely do I read a book recommended by someone else. They really have to work at persuading me it's worth my time, otherwise I wonder why I bother with it. Sometimes the person's good opinion is recommendation enough (e.g. Guan and Haoran who follow up their recommendations with loans so I have no excuse). Sometimes it's something tangential to something I've been thinking about and so my interest is piqued already (for example, on Bill Salier's recommendation, I read The Greco-Roman World of the New Testament Era by James S. Jeffers when I was at college because we were doing the New Testament world and I thought that stuff was fascinating).

Sometimes I have to read a book for something (e.g. Miracles by C.S. Lewis for an article I was writing for Hippocampus Extensions [which I can't link to until we solve our database problem, but it was for the “Scripture and Reason” issue]). Miracles is hard going—especially for someone like me who doesn't have a very good head for philosophy. I got through it because I read something else at the same time (don't remember what it was but it was fun).

Which brings me to my next point: I normally have several books going at once and they are usually different kinds of books. So at the moment I am in the middle of:

1. A Clash of Kings (George R.R. Martin) because Haoran lent it to me and I got through the first, so why not the second (though who knows when Martin will finish the series which is something that really annoys me about fantasy writers—the exception being Guy Gavriel Kay);
2. Sin City: That Yellow Bastard (Frank Miller) which was lent to me by Fish (I've never read any Sin City before);
3. Making Comics (Scott McCloud) which is really hardgoing, even if it's non-fiction in comic form;
4. For the Love of God (Volume 2) (D.A. Carson) because, since I finished Volume 1, I've been a bit aimless in my Bible reading and I thought it was time to give the Robert Murray M'Cheyne plan another whirl.

Sometimes I will ditch what I'm reading altogether and go back to an old favourite—a “comfort read”. Comfort reads are the best thing to help you get through a hard book. Though there's always my idea if anyone wants to run with it ...

Okay, dinner's getting cold. Time to go.

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