Alternate title: procrasti-nation.
I have procrastination issues. Part of me thinks that's because I might be ADD. No, really. I saw a commercial the other day about children with ADD, and they visually described his symptoms (which is good, because there's no audio at the fitnessy center), and I totally have all of those. The other reason I think I procrastinate so much is because I have an overdeveloped lizard brain which recognizes 4/5th of everything I want to do as "terrifying" and tries to protect me from it all. Bad lizard! Bad!
So it's February now, and it's time to dive in to my February books. It's a shorter month, so I need to be a little more on the ball if I want to get things read. And that would be a lot easier if I could stop reading Percy Jackson and the Olympians books. They're similar in style to my Dresden Files books, but geared for YA and involving Greek mythology. Pretty darn great. I tear through them in about a day and a half, and because they're on the Kindle, no one has to know what I'm reading. Good thing there's only one more left in the series.
I've decided for February, being Black History Month, that I need to read more by African-American authors. For my non-fiction, I've downloaded a great collection from the Kindle store: W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, essays by Zora Neale Hurston. And for my classic, I have an Octavia Butler book on my shelf that I haven't read yet, The Parable of the Sower, which I'm excited to read. "That's a classic?" you ask. Yes, it is. It's on HS reading lists... lucky kids. Octavia Butler is fantastic. If you haven't read her yet, I highly recommend Fledgling. It is to vampire stories what Twilight is to a McDonalds Two-Cheeseburger Meal. I adore the Two-Cheeseburger Meal, but feel completely sick and ashamed after eating it. Lucky for me, it's not available outside of the NY/NJ area.
Ok, enough procrastinating for now. I have a bunch of other stuff that I've been putting off that I really should get to. Ironically, I'm also putting off napping (something that people usually use as their procrastination tool). I'm stupefyingly tired. While I can do more if I get up earlier, it feels like I'm doing all of it in a pool of molasses. Maybe I need more coffee. Mmmmm... coffee. Chick-Fil-A has free coffee. I'm just saying.
Showing posts with label Booklist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Booklist. Show all posts
1/26/10
The Books of 2010: January
Ok, so I'm on this reading thing, wherein I make sure I read a "classic" book and something non-fiction each month. This month's books: The Art of War by Sun Tzu (both a classic AND non-fiction!), The War of Art (non-fiction), and The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde (my classic for the month).
I was disappointed in my translation of The Art of War. There was more commentary than there was text, and the commentary was annoying. I would have much rather have just read the original, in a giant numerated list, as it appeared to have been written. But I suppose you get what you pay for: it was free for the Kindle. I'm not planning on leading an army any time soon, so I don't have much use for the strategies it contained, but I could see how it could be useful. I would imagine this book being used today for philosophical discussions and cherry-picked aphorisms.
Speaking of aphorisms... seems like people have been mining the pages of Dorian Gray for years. I liked this book, but then I like Oscar Wilde a lot. Such pretty words... no pretty doesn't even begin to describe it. Lush, humid language. I did find a few paragraphs that I read aloud to Cabana Boy, and found my own quotes that I want to explore in more depth. However, I did skip over the catalog of fancy things that Dorian began to acquire after reading the "poisoned book." As one chastised for cataloging in my own writing (yeah, except for this here bloggy-blog), I'm not likely to seek it out in others. Having seen Gross Indecencies, the play about Oscar Wilde's trials, I feel primed to look for homoerotic subtext in every chapter. But I don't think that matters too much, and there's no need to add to what's already there. I don't think Dorian and Harry were shtupping. With Dorian and Basil, probably some oral. Dorian and those other pretty boys he corrupted? Most definitely.
I did want to capture this quote: "A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry they dare not realize."
It's very common to see writers, actors, general creative types who are wacky on the outside. Ostentatious clothes, hipster trends, disdain for normal grooming habits, ridiculous nicknames, and a deliberate cultivation of a low-rent lifestyle... the visual identifiers for so many artsy types (especially when I was in college). Some of the most talented writers and artists I've met are the most unassuming, nondescript people in a crowd. This is not to say that one shouldn't follow one's own style, just that Burning Man is no longer counter-culture. In other words, stop trying so hard.
If I can find the time between today and Sunday, I will try to throw in a classic play too. I've also selected my books for next month, but more on that, uh, next month.
I was disappointed in my translation of The Art of War. There was more commentary than there was text, and the commentary was annoying. I would have much rather have just read the original, in a giant numerated list, as it appeared to have been written. But I suppose you get what you pay for: it was free for the Kindle. I'm not planning on leading an army any time soon, so I don't have much use for the strategies it contained, but I could see how it could be useful. I would imagine this book being used today for philosophical discussions and cherry-picked aphorisms.
Speaking of aphorisms... seems like people have been mining the pages of Dorian Gray for years. I liked this book, but then I like Oscar Wilde a lot. Such pretty words... no pretty doesn't even begin to describe it. Lush, humid language. I did find a few paragraphs that I read aloud to Cabana Boy, and found my own quotes that I want to explore in more depth. However, I did skip over the catalog of fancy things that Dorian began to acquire after reading the "poisoned book." As one chastised for cataloging in my own writing (yeah, except for this here bloggy-blog), I'm not likely to seek it out in others. Having seen Gross Indecencies, the play about Oscar Wilde's trials, I feel primed to look for homoerotic subtext in every chapter. But I don't think that matters too much, and there's no need to add to what's already there. I don't think Dorian and Harry were shtupping. With Dorian and Basil, probably some oral. Dorian and those other pretty boys he corrupted? Most definitely.
I did want to capture this quote: "A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry they dare not realize."
It's very common to see writers, actors, general creative types who are wacky on the outside. Ostentatious clothes, hipster trends, disdain for normal grooming habits, ridiculous nicknames, and a deliberate cultivation of a low-rent lifestyle... the visual identifiers for so many artsy types (especially when I was in college). Some of the most talented writers and artists I've met are the most unassuming, nondescript people in a crowd. This is not to say that one shouldn't follow one's own style, just that Burning Man is no longer counter-culture. In other words, stop trying so hard.
If I can find the time between today and Sunday, I will try to throw in a classic play too. I've also selected my books for next month, but more on that, uh, next month.
1/4/10
Book Me
See that new list that's appeared in the left nav? One of my goals for the year is to read a non-fiction book each month. Another of my goals for the year is to read a "classic" each month. So I'm tracking the books here, to be accountable. It will help that I have a shiny new Kindle, and also that there's a shelf of books in the house that contains both non-fiction and "classics" that I haven't read. Please feel free to leave suggestions for me.
Note: I keep putting "classics" in quotation marks, because there's always the question of "What is a 'classic'?" The traditional canon of Dead White Men is quickly fading, as writers like Sandra Cisneros and Chinua Achebe have been on reading lists for almost as long as I've known how to read.
I've chosen a list to use as a guide. It's from a library in Wisconsin, which seems very normal and not something pretentious or political. It's called the College Bound Reading List, and I would assume that it's for students planning on going to college. I went to college, several times, so I really should have read all of these books by now. I chose this list because it's straightforward, because we already own some of these books, and because I've already read a lot of them (hey, I only have a year!).
Maybe I'll create a Google Doc version and share it, crossing off the ones I've already read -- although maybe I will decide to reread some of them -- it's my curriculum. That's also why I'm not going to read The Scarlet Letter. Life is too short for Hawthorne and maligned women.
Note: I keep putting "classics" in quotation marks, because there's always the question of "What is a 'classic'?" The traditional canon of Dead White Men is quickly fading, as writers like Sandra Cisneros and Chinua Achebe have been on reading lists for almost as long as I've known how to read.
I've chosen a list to use as a guide. It's from a library in Wisconsin, which seems very normal and not something pretentious or political. It's called the College Bound Reading List, and I would assume that it's for students planning on going to college. I went to college, several times, so I really should have read all of these books by now. I chose this list because it's straightforward, because we already own some of these books, and because I've already read a lot of them (hey, I only have a year!).
Maybe I'll create a Google Doc version and share it, crossing off the ones I've already read -- although maybe I will decide to reread some of them -- it's my curriculum. That's also why I'm not going to read The Scarlet Letter. Life is too short for Hawthorne and maligned women.
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