No Emotion is the Final One
"Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from our home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere."
--Jean Rhys
In the past few months I've rediscovered reading. Like most things I used to expect too much ... not of reading but of myself. I read or only wanted to read non-fiction books - books that promised to make me smarter. Books that when you mentioned them at gatherings people like myself thought, "Oh I don't know anything about that." But reading, much like running, needs to be a personal endeavor. The moment you start the comparison is the moment you lose the joy. This a hard fact for me to swallow - at least the part of me that is a competitor. But, I'm striving to do things more because I love them rather than because they help me compete...
"What could I do? My needlework teacher suffered from a problem of vision. She recognised things according to expectation and environment. If you were in a particular place, you expected to see particular things. Sheep and hills, sea and fish; if there was an elephant in the supermarket, she'd either not see it at all, or call it Mrs Jones and talk about fishcakes. But most likely, she'd do what most people do when confronted with something they don't understand: Panic."
- Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Read recently:
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit - Jeanette Winterson
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World - Vicki Myron
Living History - Hillary Clinton
--Jean Rhys
In the past few months I've rediscovered reading. Like most things I used to expect too much ... not of reading but of myself. I read or only wanted to read non-fiction books - books that promised to make me smarter. Books that when you mentioned them at gatherings people like myself thought, "Oh I don't know anything about that." But reading, much like running, needs to be a personal endeavor. The moment you start the comparison is the moment you lose the joy. This a hard fact for me to swallow - at least the part of me that is a competitor. But, I'm striving to do things more because I love them rather than because they help me compete...
"What could I do? My needlework teacher suffered from a problem of vision. She recognised things according to expectation and environment. If you were in a particular place, you expected to see particular things. Sheep and hills, sea and fish; if there was an elephant in the supermarket, she'd either not see it at all, or call it Mrs Jones and talk about fishcakes. But most likely, she'd do what most people do when confronted with something they don't understand: Panic."
- Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Read recently:
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit - Jeanette Winterson
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World - Vicki Myron
Living History - Hillary Clinton
I have also been reading a lot in the last few months too. I discovered that the local library has so many of the books that I want to read (new releases too) -- it's nice because it sort of gives me a deadline. My old method was just buying books on Amazon then putting them on the shelf without reading them. I recently read Room by Emma Donoghue -- could not put it down.
ReplyDelete