I like to read. I need to remind myself of that because occasionally reading seems more like an intense compulsion or an unbreakable habit than an enjoyable part of my life. In fact reading is all of those. I read quite a bit--though I never think of reading in terms of quantity. I do sometimes wonder about the quality of my reading, both in terms of what I'm reading and how well I'm reading it. The latter consideration doesn't usually figure into certain kinds of reading, fiction mostly but also perusing of magazines, newspapers and the web, though perhaps it should. The question of reading well, reading carefully, is familiar to anyone who has ever pursued an academic vocation, but it looms especially large when one tries to teach others (students namely) what it means to read well and how to develop good reading habits. It forces me to be more aware of my own reading habits and it occurs to me that I have read far, far more than I have retained, far more in fact than I can remember reading. Meaning not only can I not recall the substance of much of what I've read, I have forgotten that I've even read it. Of course I remember stuff I loved, stuff I hated and stuff that moved me or changed me in some way, but I've read plenty that wouldn't fall into any of those categories--and much of it doesn't come easily to mind. This is not surprising, is in fact quite obvious, but there is a point: I'm going to try to keep some sort of record of my reading for the year. Not absolutely all of it; I have a regular rotation of papers, magazines, websites and such that I read and I'm not about to try and record all of that. It would take up far too much time. But it would be interesting at the end of the year to be able to go back and see just what books, articles, essays, and book chapters I had read. Though I am not going to list every individual reading I assign my classes, only those that I feel ought to be recorded. So that's what I'm gonna do. I'm not going to set out any specific criteria for what "counts," I'm just going to go with my intuition and trust that it will serve well enough. Nor am I sure what sort of formatting or categories will be best; annotate or not? We'll see. I'll figure it out as I go. In any case, here's the list so far for January:
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell--fiction
Selections from Plato: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, The Republic--nonfiction
"Education Through Violence" from A History of Western Philosophy vol.1 by W.T. Jones--nonfiction
"Consolation for Unpopularity" from The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain De Botton--nonfiction
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson--fiction
the last book I read in 2004 was The Final Solution by Michael Chabon.
doesn't seem like much somehow...though Cloud Atlas was a hefty novel (and well worth its weight).
