Writing About Reading

Instead of writing about writing, I thought I'd briefly write about reading. Like many of you, I don't read as much as I'd like to; I read a lot for my job, and when the day is over it's tough to pick up a book for reading pleasure. Fortunately the materials I have to read for work are generally pretty interesting (to me anyway): Bigfoot, psychology, urban legends, ghosts, hoaxes, and so on.

The problem is that when I'm reading them I'm in Research Mode: I'm under deadline and trying to skim quickly, extract important information or a useful quote, try to figure out where to put it in the article or blog, edit it, and turn it in. There's no real chance to leisurely peruse the deeper context or context. Often I place a Post-It note with a quick scribble mentioning some important idea on the page, but I may or may not get back to it--until the next time I'm writing something on a related topic and consulting the same book.

This is why I try to set aside at least an hour or two each week to read for pleasure, otherwise it won't get done. Of course reading should be a pleasure instead of a chore--but when you've got four or five books open at the same time, it gets tricky to keep up on all of them...

I remember a quote from Warren Zevon who said that when we buy a book we like to think we're also buying the time to read that book.