Pages

Friday, December 30, 2016

maybe I will, maybe I won't

Let's see what happens if I try something new.

Books completed this week: 
  • Ranma 1/2 Vols. 3-4 by Rumiko Takahashi (graphic novel, reread, very enjoyable)

Books I'm currently reading:
  • if on a winter's night a traveller by Italo Calvino, trans. William Weaver (fiction, I'm enjoying it, but it's not going as fast as I thought it might when I started)
  • Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patten, and Sheila Heen (nonfiction, professional development, very useful)
  • Ranma 1/2 Vols. 5-6 by Rumiko Takahashi

Books that made it into the house this week:
  • Ghost Month by Ed Lin (this is one of those books I was super excited to get and as soon as I held it in my hand I wasn't sure I wanted to read it right now... such is the curse of the librarian)
  • The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben (this was the Christmas gift of choice in the family - there were four separate copies, including mine, given to immediate family members)
  • A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age by Daniel Levitin (given to fishy, not me, but it's on my to-read list so I'll probably do that sometime too.)
***

So the Calvino. I'm enjoying it, and it delighted me especially in the first seven to ten pages. A book written in the second person that can delight me is a rare beast indeed. But for whatever reason it's not grabbing me, in that I'm not desperate to get back to it, which I find I have to be these days in order to read at any speed. There are so many other things calling for my attention that I have to be hooked by a book, really hooked, in order to finish it within the three week library lending period. I need to want to read that book to the exclusion of everything else, and that alone seems to give me the kind of focus I need. The exception to this is nonfiction, which can generally be picked up and put down whenever, as long as it's non-narrative, so a few minutes here and there can be stolen out of a day to make a little progress.

The Calvino has a narrative. I'm just not as wrapped up in it yet as I need to be.