Dearest of dear forgotten (yet still beloved) Readers,
I have been reading this book since September. I have left it at my bf’s house and therefore I usually only saw it on weekends, and only if there was time. And I think that was the best way, I certainly could not have gotten through its density faster. It is dense with emotions, impressions…the depth and shallowness of life…of course I am not doing it justice but it was a major hit when it came out in 2001. As well, it also encapsulates the late 90s…I was a child then so I wasn’t personally commenting on the decline of capitalism then, so its interesting to see the thoughts of a main character like Chip, in his 30s then, and so skeptical of the whole thing…which of course more people have cottoned on to now…
It was just…well! It was an experience. I don’t mind that I did not read so much this year. The things that have fallen into my hands this year have been worthwhile, even just this book and trying to read Wordsworth, making the time like it was 1850…Several years ago a good friend lent me the Corrections, saying it was really good, she also lent me a pile of things I suspect are really tough emotionally, such as Beloved by Toni Morrison; that will clearly take me years and years. The Corrections is, at points, pretty tough emotionally, but the payoff is huge. The tagline on the back of the book says that it is a meditation on “what is life for?” A question that is of interest to most people. I loved the characters, I really got into it, I believed in the family dynamics 100%, I loved when the characters, who mistakenly show so much of themselves looked sideways and commented (internally) on each other. Enid, Denise, the father (Arnold?) Chip and Gary are very real. I think they are going to stick with me for a long time.
Also, the book is just very smart. Such work. It weaves several storylines together, in the background, never losing pace but never hinting as to where it may be going, often it goes back into the past, it often goes into farce, and the chaos of the father’s declining mind…it is one of those books where I sit back and realize…I just could never do this kind of work…and it was very addictive to read. The whole book trundles toward a Christmas, that Enid wanted (how the desires of women keep the world turning!) which finally arrived when it was Christmas for me, in the world, a very nice synchronicity. And then, like real Christmas, the Christmas in the novel was over and life went on!
It is now the last day of 2023. Somehow! I am doing some reflections and trying to wrap some things up, in anticipation of the whole new world that is coming (2024….wow). I will leave you with a gift, I wasn’t going to tell you (what was for me) the greatest gift of The Corrections, I was thinking I was going to let you discover it for yourself, but, this line (presented like any throwaway line in amongst the other nonsense of life) may not strike everyone the same, maybe you wouldn’t even notice it. But for me, perhaps the greatest truth that I found anywhere during 2023, I found in the last 20th of this big book.
It was:
“and because what a person wants is what they are”…
Last month, I began a project that occurred to me last year, that I never thought I would actually start! I guess I really have got that bored! I really felt that I needed something on the side of my thesis work, to be chipping away at slowly. I need to feel that I am making progress on my PhD, and while that is happening, veeeery slowly, I can also know that I am making progress on getting to know my English poetic heritage.
And apparently, that starts with Wordsworth! Through my audible subscription, I downloaded “The Great Courses: The Lives and Works of the English Romantic Poets” which has about 12 hours of lectures. Immeditately I could tell that this would serve as an excellent “spine” for this project. I started working through it slowly, and was amazed to realize, that as I should have expected, I was aware of only the tip of an enormous iceberg. So, so many things that I never knew about. So many beautiful things. So many enriching words!
So this is where my English Romantic Poets Project stands now (we are in Phase 1: Wordsworth). I have listened to the first three lectures on Wordsworth, but I can’t listen any further until I read the Prelude (an epic poem that is also his autobiography —-an absolutely huge undertaking that I can’t really foresee doing anytime soon). However, until then I have the adorable book pictured above, which has a little story attached to it.
This year, I’ve been able to spend a bit of time at home with my family, and help my recently retired mom on a house-decluttering journey that she has embarked upon. First we started with the books. She has kept everything from her own studies and a book club that she was part of for several years. I was able to keep all of the poetry books that interested me from her B.A. in literature in the mid-1970s, and so my shelves are luxuriant now with all the Romantic poets, Frost, Dickenson and Milton (I know—me—and Milton! Who would have thought!) Maybe someday I’ll see what all his dusty holy hype was about.
So its lovely to have this old book, in excellent condition, published in 1965 to work from. It’s a selection of Wordsworth’s works—ummm, he wrote steadily for about 60 years and produced A LOT. I don’t expect to be a completionist with this project, I only desire to be well versed in his…uh, verses.
I think this book is just the ticket, although about 1/3 of it is taken up with The Prelude and some “prefaces” to various poetry collections he wrote, that I do not plan to read. Already I have discovered an amazing poem “A Night Piece” that I knew from the first instant will remain a favourite forever, and I might try and commit it to memory. It’s wonderful—celestial in theme and just perfect in phrasing.
That’s the thing about Wordsworth, even when I don’t really need so many poems about children (and often, their mortality) and some tales of wandering around sylvan dells seem to be a lot of the same, every few pages there is a line where you sit back and think “yep—that’s about the best way that has ever been said. End of.”
I am enjoying almost everything I read in this book, very slowly in the mornings. I also have an audiobook that was one of the free offerings on audible, that consists of about 3 hours of a selection of Wordsworth’s poems read out (in a VERY posh voice, omg, the last line of one of the lucy poems is read out as “rolled round with rocks and stones and tree-HAASSS”), which I will also chip away at. Between it and the above textbook of poems, I think I will achieve a very well rounded view of Wordsworth.
In general, I think it is so interesting that Wordsworth just—-knew his calling. He was like—I’m going to write poems about nature and humanity and I’m just going to do that. Until I die. And—that’s what he did! Eventually he was even lauded for it in his lifetime and became the poet laureate of England. He sort of received money by chance whenever he needed it (an inheritance freed him up when he was young) and then later he achieved a cushy job, that seemed to leave him plenty of time to write (I’m not sure if “being the royal postmaster” was actually something he had to do/if there was somewhere he had to go in the morning), but anyway, he settled down, with a wife and kids and his sister living with him (more on HER in the future!) and he wrote. Now, I don’t know much about Lord Byron, but Wordsworth seems to have lived the opposite lifestyle of Lord Byron!
In so spending his life, Wordsworth built up this huge corpus of literature, which is our gift. We can pull from it, consult it, spend time in it—there isn’t a lot to necessarily respond to in it anymore— although every once and awhile he slips in something about how all men are equal and they all ought to love each other—which was revolutionary at the time. It’s just this big “trove.” And much of it is lovely, and some of it is morose—but hey, even more of it rhymes!
He was a lucky mortal. To know what he was meant to do, and to not have been obstructed in the doing of it.
Yes yes, I know this blog is already weird. In January I dedicated some of my morning coffee time to reading Royal Style by I. Sewald. I cannot say that I luxuriated in its pages, but I am sure that I was meant to. Royal Style is a very dated book, it was published in 1988, and, as can be seen from the front cover, it was a puff piece. Look at Charles and Diana smiling in their grand surroundings in the late 80s, when we now know that the marriage was beyond the rocks by then. Well, I am not here to discuss their marriage, although reading this book in 2023 is a bit shocking throughout, because in it Diana is a vibrant presence and of course expected to be one for a long time. It was written less than 10 years before her death, and before any of the royal divorces. The few pictures in the book show case weddings, the Queen mother, little royal children and everything is just—at it height, and apparently always would keep trending up. As a time capsule…it feels both nostalgic and cautionary.
But I want to talk about the late 80s. A time of conspicuous consumption, when every 24 year old was on the verge of marriage or had already taken that leap, and the next step was two babies. There were still “stay-at-home” moms (outside of religious homeschooling families). My parents had a pink living room with a piano, where you never went except for fancy gatherings or Christmas photos. Twas really a different time. I was just going through my oldest photos to move them into a new album (do you know that most stores don’t carry photo albums anymore? Because this is an antique technology now. I had to buy mine online) and I saw little baby me in a long lacy dress, being held by every member of my extended family, attired in their best clothes, in the pink living room. How did we ever have time for these ceremonies?
Anyway, I do not want to belabour the point too much here. I’m not really sure what the point is myself. Except that I am looking for a German word which would encompass the striving for perfection, without being aware that that perfection is not sustainable—that feeling that the late 80s gives me. Vergangenheitsanscheinendperfektionsehnsucht ? [The longing for a seemingly perfect past] (This word does not exist).
Am I saying that this book about the Royal family reminds me of my own life? Well, I don’t mean to, but… it is true that my parent’s marriage fell apart around that same time, and we lost the pink living room and my mom no longer had the time to design and make new Christmas dresses for us every year. Sometimes I look back and I miss that house in the country very much, because it’s where I first experienced the world; sometimes it seems like the events of that time do still need to be addressed, because they live in me and affect how I act. But in the end, it was better. For us, everything turned out the way it should have been, the places we ended up going, the people we ended up meeting. But I don’t think Prince William and Harry were so fortunate. Losing their mother made their life…go a different way, and while they will still be able to live good lives, and have great experiences, there is no blessing to find in the fact of their mother’s passing. They will always wish that that hadn’t happened and that life had been different.
This is very apparent in Prince Harry’s book. And I know it has already been picked to pieces, but I just want to register that I too read it. I heard it on audible, and it is long, and a bit weird in spots, but generally, I appreciated it (enough). I think that everyone has the right to tell their story (caveat: not murderers*) and I imagine that the writing of it helped him process things, as writing generally does. Prince Harry (henceforth P.H.) has lived a life very different to all of us, and I think he is allowed to make that clear. Society holds public figures to different standards, we need them to mean something, often a lot of different things at one time, according to our own individual hang-ups—I wonder–how can we possibly expect someone like P.H. to adhere to our standards and practices, when his life has been so different, when he has been on parade as a symbol of our collective and unspoken hopes his whole life? And yet he is remarkably normal sounding. Yes, yes, I know that there was a ghost-writer, but Prince Harry reads the audiobook himself and it sounds remarkably like we imagine he would talk, or the things he would think are funny/important.
One of the main impressions I came away with from the first part was that “some people are meant to be soldiers.” A lot of people seem to skip PH’s war stuff, the conservative types who want to hate on him generally just don’t want to give him any credit for having done anything, ever (even though they are the type of people who generally admire veterans and support their own country’s military actions) or they are pacifists who skip it because “war shouldn’t happen.” Um, yes. That would be great. But we live in the world. And soldiering is, a profession. It pretty much has always been, and this book just made me realize that, for better or worse, some people are very good at being soldiers. It seems that Prince Harry was one of these, he enjoyed the work, gaining the skills, and the lifestyle. I almost felt it was a pity as well that he had to leave off doing it, when it so clearly was the work he was meant to do.
That was pretty much my main takeaway from the book, that some people are suited by disposition to be soldiers (and that good people might be this way, not just demented killers). I didn’t enjoy the second half of the book so much, the kind of aimless partying, and his marriage, although it seems that he wanted marriage more than anything. He really really wanted a family; I mean, it all makes sense, just not too much happened, except that was momentous to him. Well, actually maybe its good that we get a story from a public man which says the biggest and most important event of his life was his marriage. That is where women’s stories have ended, for long enough.
Basically, for a person who still lives under the English Crown (nominally) I felt I had to read Spare, I was also curious, and P.H. and I are the same age. This book also points out how different the Gen X and millennial generations are from the one previously. The Boomers started out as freewheeling no doubt, but they conformed in the end. And we just…can’t quite do that for some reason.
*Some people might say that P.H is a murderer because he well, murdered during war, and to that I say, the context of war is “different.”
Lovely to see you again. Welcome to my yearly confession time. 2022 was a pretty good reading year. I didn’t end up reading all the things I wanted to or bought specifically, but it was still somehow good. In 2021 (gosh, the years keep coming and they don’t stop coming) it seemed like the problem was finding things that I wanted to read, but this year that was not so hard, possibly because I now keep a massive list of things that sound good in Notion (we are talking about 1500 titles). It’s very good to have a big pool to think about and sort through, and actually, it helps you identify the best of the best.
A Material Analysis of My 2022 Reading Year:
Audiobooks
February – A World Lit Only By Fire
March – Chemistry by W. Wang
April – The Plot
July – Run Towards the Danger
October – Affluenza
November – The Anthropocene Reviewed
Kindle
January – The Gift of Wings, L.M. Montgomery biography
Physical Books
May – Status Anxiety
June – Henry VIII: A Life
August – White Ivy
September- The Department of Speculation
*DNF – Fury by S. Rushdie
December – Chalkdust in My Blood
Now I will say a few things about these books by category:
Audiobooks:
Two of the audiobooks I heard this year have actually already been reviewed in some of the (very few) blog posts that I wrote this year. And yet I am a blog. So there. “A World Lit Only By Fire” was a 14 hour long history of the Middle Ages written by someone who despises the Middle Ages and everything that went on there. It was fine, I learned a lot about Popes, when I have never really intended to learn about Popes. I was lonely in February and it passed the time, although this is pretty much the “dark and dirty” dismissal of the Middle Ages that scholars have mostly come away from.
“Run Towards the Danger” is a BEAUTIFULLY written memoir by Canadian actress Sarah Polley, and I probably will re-read it someday, although one chapter in particular, about an ex-Canadian broadcaster’s sex offenses is particularly hard reading. But, there are other beautiful bits, and basically, I appreciate when people get a chance to tell their stories. This was a WONDERFUL listen, and one of my favourites of the year.
At some point in the fall I heard “Affluenza” on audio, a book I have been meaning to read since I picked in up in a bookshop in 2012 but didn’t buy it. It was better on audio, as sociological studies and Non-fiction usually is. Its a book about capitalism that seems not to be allowed to use the word capitalism, and it is really amazing, that it said everything it did in 2004 or so, or at least before the advent of social media—the book talks a lot about how comparing our relative levels of wealth and things really hurts our psyches—and yes, this is BEFORE most people spent everyday using search engines to do just that. I think he was quite right, and that this is an important book, although the chapter on women’s beauty kind of annoyed me—I don’t know if it was because it was so obvious, or because it was one-sided (I don’t think much at all was said about men’s beauty) or because I felt a male sociologist studying this (oh so outside of the problem) seemed very patronizing.
I have not actually finished “The Anthropocene Reviewed” by John Greene, but I am perfectly fine with that. I plan on finishing it sometime I am trapped somewhere or on a long flight or train ride. It kind of sounds like a science book, but it is the most personal, emotional response to like, everything one encounters in life, and I’m not sure why I expected anything different. Right now I am kind of trapped in the reflections on a bunch of things that are a bit boring (sidewalks, Indianapolis, lawn care)—I know he is trying to make me care about them, and I am usually happy with off-beat takes on mundane things in small proportions, but this has been like, a lot.
*I’m not reviewing the L.M.M biography again, it received it’s own blog post in January 2022, when I was young and full of life.
Okay, let’s get to the Physical Books, of which there are many:
“Status Anxiety” has been reviewed on the blog. In June 2022 I went on a holiday to England with my parents, truly one of the best holidays of my life where SOMEHOW we did so many things in about 6 days (celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee in London, went to the Tower of London, had a unforgettable private walking tour of Oxford as well as a Sheldonian graduation ceremony, went to Stonhenge AND Highclere Castle (Downton Abbey) it was insane). Somewhere along the way (I think the Tower Gift Shop?) I picked up small Penguin volume called “Henry VIII: A Life”—part of an amazing series that apparently already exists, covering what is known about every English monarch’s life. I would read them all.
I also read “White Ivy” which turned out to be kind of a thriller novel, while I was bumping around travelling in June. It was good, fast paced, although I found the twist played out, because it is too similar to The Secret History in some ways. But actually, the dynamic between the protagonist and the people/family she is trying to BE is very interesting, and that would be worth a re-read, if I haven’t given the book away yet. I liked it best before it got to the thriller part.
In August I was once again very fortunately trundling around England again, this time for a cousin’s wedding. That was an amazing day. I also was able to drop in on a great friend, and see Brighton for the first time ever. (Gosh, just getting so personal in this blog lol). It was a very fun time all around, and I stole “The Department of Speculation” by Jenny O’Dell or something and OF COURSE I will give it back (but I haven’t yet) and I WANTED to write about it on the blog but I couldn’t contain my SEETHING ANGER long enough to do any such thing. Oh Friend, you are in for such a long rant when I see you next. Basically, the relationship dynamics that are described in it SHOULD NEVER happen (!!!)
In the fall I also DNF’d “Fury” by S. Rushdie. It had been very interesting up to a certain point, and it is about that moment in like 1999/2001 when life seemed very vivid (because I was a teenager) and those times seem just so different from now, and I love that—-but….when a daughter ruins her father’s life by knowingly and unregretfully seducing him—something that has never actually happened but certain types of men (apparently) and Bible writers seem to think that it does happen…well, you just can’t really go on enjoying yourself, can you?
In December I read a little book called “Chalkdust in My Blood” from the 1970s, published by a little press in Cornwall Ontario. It is about a teacher’s career in Eastern Ontario between 1920-1970 and it was very enjoyable, if very dated (definitely in the “we don’t use that word anymore” way. It tells stories, mostly about 1-room schoolhouses in the place in the world that I am the most fond of. If there is any land my bones are attached to, it is Eastern Ontario. (More to come on Eastern Ontario in future, I am sure).
So all in all, it was a worthwhile reading year. I feel like I’ve engaged with a lot of topics somehow. But some books were incomplete. Like, Status Anxiety never mentions the effect of capitalism on wealth/one’s self esteem, which Affluenza definitely did, but completely missed out on how a society rooted in patriarchy results in different expectations of women and men. Neither book engages with race at all—but racial stigma wasn’t discovered to underpin our societies until like 2015 or something. (That is the darkest of sarcasms). It seems…I have been reading some dated books.
Another example of the…insufficient depth… of some of the books I read this year is protagonist of the novel “The Department of Speculation.” She is so profoundly affected by the patriarchy—it is that system that has created her tiny, shrinking sense of self and shaped her belief that it is worth it to try and keep a man at all costs. Recently, my friend sent me a twitter account called “Man Who Has it All” or something, where someone has basically written out all the expectations placed on women, but reversed the gender to men, and although the subject matter is kept quite light: “DADS—have you bought Christmas presents for her parents? Planned your holiday hair routine? Moisturized your penis?” it points out how the patriarchal expectations are ingrained into every part of our lives.
I also got stuck into a VERY stupid (but STUPIDLY engrossing!) novel at the very end of the year, called “The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet” by Colleen McCullough. I just could not stop reading it before bed, and this proves that you cannot plan for everything, and that your reading life cannot, and should not, be “perfect.”
Book Choice for April 2022: Status Anxiety, A. de Botton, 2004
Good Afternoon.
Yes, it is October. A month which should mean leaves rustling in red-gold breezes, but we seem to have skipped from summer sun directly to chilly November this year, which is a bit sad. There is not too much basking in the Octobery-ness of it all this year, although who knows, that may come back. We are not even half way through yet.
It has been months since I blogged, but I have really wanted to. I am just hopping on today to record my thoughts on certain books that I went out of my way to get my hands on earlier this year. Regarding the first of these, “Status Anxiety”, I do not have too much to say, although it was interesting and well written. Not to toot my own horn however, but the content of this book is, for the most part, things you will pick up over the course of your life. Looking back at the Table of Contents, I can see that the first part (which I had completely forgotten) treats various modern problems: “lovelessness,* expectation, meritocracy, snobbery and dependence.” These must have been interesting enough to read about at the time, but I remember zero of the content. Suffice it to say that these indeed are modern problems, waaaay high up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, to the point where I believe that you can choose to be bothered by these or not (whereas, somethings in life you cannot choose to be bothered by. They are problems, endemic, actual problems with a capital P; these other elite problems are, I suppose, interesting enough to lightly ponder on occasion).
(*lovelessness in de Botton’s work meant more about not being appreciated/rewarded as much as you would like to be, via complements and “respect” at one’s job etc., which can be rather a bottomless pit; not like, chronically never having close relationships or having been loved by parents or friends, which IS, of course, a major human need and a total lack of companionship and care would be a major problem).
In the second half of the book, which I do remember, de Botton offers “solutions”, which are really ways to escape from these problems. These are the things that I mean that you basically “pick up” by having lived in the world for any length of time, ever conversed over wine with guys who read philosophy (less avoidable a scenario than you might think) or by like, reading the culture section of a newspaper ever, or really, not even going that far. He offers truisms along the lines of “people use religion to solve/avoid their problems like fear of death” (which is pretty obvious), but also “now that we (in Western Europe) generally don’t have religion, we are suffering more because we assume everything is within our control, whereas lots of things are not.” Yes. True. Not exactly rewriting history, but this book collects a lot of such truisms, that one has generally had some contact with before, under the headings “philosophy, art, politics, religion, bohemia.”
The most interesting section to me, by far, was the section on “Bohemia.” By this, de Botton means that one can escape the modern problems that make you sad by living an alternate lifestyle. I believe most of his examples consisted of the turn-of-the-century-Paris-garret-artist variety (something that has by now been so mythologized I’m not really sure it ever really happened), and I believe he must have gone on about other artists colonies or basically, other alternative groups. There was nothing shocking here, but I remember being slightly inflamed in my heart after “Oh yes! Bohemia IS the answer!” But not knowing where exactly to run to. I realized almost immediately however, that my own personal Bohemia is Academia. The relentless pursuit of a “calling” (—although you are not supposed to say this any more—there is apparently nothing vocational or spiritual allowed about “the academic track” any more, we have quantitative metrics and paper-rankings now) is my escape mechanism. For me, academia is a spiritual path and a love affair and if I die for it so what, I died for love. It’s a really healthy mindset I promise you.
So anyway, that last section of this work was thought provoking, I realized afresh that I do try and escape the modern world, so thanks for that Alan. It’s a good book for (sort-of) pinning names on vague feelings about life, but I did come away with the feeling that it would have been EXACTLY what I wanted while I was in my last couple years of high school—like, if I could have corralled my attention span then (dubious) I would have really enjoyed it, because all of these currents in the social air would have been new to me and exciting. And I certainly was already looking for a way to escape. I wish I had had it then.
In the end, worth a read because it is nicely written, 3/5.
February 2022 Book Choice: Chemistry by Weike Wang
March 2022 Book Choice: The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz
It is debatable as to weather someone working on a PhD should read a book in which the main character is also working on a PhD. It could go badly for the protagonist, and the reader could get discouraged. However, as I seem intent on sticking my hand in the argon-box (you’ll see, and note that I said “hand” and not “head”) academic memoirs are all I want right now. Maybe they are all I have ever wanted.
Maybe there will come a time when I don’t want them at all again ever.
But then, I would probably start reading academic Quit Lit.
This book was great. It kept me hooked listening til the end, and I even went back a month after finishing it and listened to the first couple chapters again. Unfortunately for my desires, the main character is only in the lab, struggling to make gold (basically) for the first couple chapters—and I just loved that visceral detail that can only be provided by an eyewitness: an Incredibly Successful Colleague to compare one’s self unfavourably to, ever minute of the godforsaken day, the daily rythyms of failure – lunchtime – failure, the brutal pronouncements of a distant professor. I am not saying this was my experience, but this part of the book is very real and I found, extremely engaging. Scientists—they take their work so seriously. Or perhaps, anyone can fall prey to taking it too seriously, I certainly do by times—and yet it IS serious, all the time.
Not just because, in a lab setting, you could open the argon box and kill everyone, but also in academia in general—and this tendency may actually be worse in the humanities: if you don’t look serious, all the time, the greats that be are not going to recognize you as a contender and support and promote you.
In the hard science disciplines at least, it should be less disputable—your sheer number of papers, sooo quantifiable and rank-able, should win the day.
It’s all just very interesting, and I completely recommend it as a read. There is the one misogynist colleague, who openly speaks the misogyny that exists; but he does recognize the Incredibly Successful Colleague’s achievements, and the ISC is a woman, and so his misogyny seems lessened: it is there and not there. It is air.
There is the complexity of a relationship where both partners are in academia, in the same field: but one is shining and the other floundering. There is so much there. And then, the main character starts to hit that point in her life, where she is finally realizing that she has too much unresolved psychological baggage that has nothing to do with academia—to go forward in her life until she starts to work on it.
Her journey back through her past, although very interesting, was not my favourite part, and why I would not personally re-read this book, although the discussion of immigrants’ lives in the US, and difficult (borderline abusive) parents is both engaging and important. I think for some people, reading the latter half of this book will be devastating and restorative. I preferred more how the heroine finds herself, by falling back on the things she knows, which is Chemistry, and science, and the forces that work in the world: she does know so much and it is lovingly and enthrallingly explained.
Really it is a quite perfect book, with something for a lot of people: difficult upbringings, a relationship breakdown, and the inner turmoil of not being able to bring one’s PhD to a close, but having to go on living anyway.
5 billion stars.
In March I listened to another audiobook, called “The Plot” and it was not good. It was—pretty damn terrible. However, I am keeping it in my list of 12 Books a Year, because it really did serve as excellent “literary roughage” (yes, that concept I am always banging on about, that one can’t read good books all the time) as in, it totally clarified for me what I do want to read next.
This book starts off soooo promisingly though, to my tastes—it begins in an academic setting, a college-level semester-long creative writing retreat; it starts in remote upstate Vermont, in a spooky forest…and then it just makes no use of that setting. It starts with some academic side-eyeing (oh, now I recognize the name, she has won a Prize prize, ooh, she must actually be a high-flyer) and the requisite self-comparisons, which I find very intriguing as a dynamic of a group. The main character also detailed all his career triumphs and stagnations in the beginning and I was here for it—-
And then it changes into a poor detective story with a hundred eye-rollingly convenient lucky breaks, and a solution that you can see from its very first mention (in about chapter 3 of 35). It was the WORST. It had TWO characters and no subplots, no distraction from the agonizing stupidity of the “plot.” And, very fittingly in a way, it is supposed to be about the “plot” for a novel that was SOOOOO GOOOD that it was stolen (there is a bit of meta hemming and hawing over whether a writer/artist can “steal” a plot), but really, the plot as it is gradually revealed was not more intricate or surprising than that of any made-for-tv movie. I did know from the beginning, really, that the stolen plot could never live up to the premise of this book, but I did hope. That was dumb, but hey, I did manage to finish this novel because the audiobook narration was smooth and I kept thinking “there is NO WAY that the main character can be THIS DUMB.”
A hundred years ago, Lucy Maude Montgomery (henceforth L.M.M or Maude) was putting the finishing touches on her novel “Emily of New Moon,” the first in a new trilogy she was writing, about another orphan girl who makes good.
LMM’s first published novel was of course, Anne of Green Gables. It came out in 1908 and made her an instant celebrity. It was life-changing for Maude, and plucked her from obscurity as they say, leading to money, movies and making tiny Prince Edward Island, Canada’s smallest province, the goal of a stream of pilgrims that has never since stopped. I thought I knew waaay too much about L.M.M, patron saint of my life, as she is for all acolytes wishing for the good and the beautiful.
But did I?
Well, I know more now. This is it, the biography of L.M.M. It is the product of twenty years of dedicated research and Mary Henley Rubio actually interviewed dozens of people connected with L.M.M, including her son, and seemingly entire South Ontarian towns. It is a document that can never be replicated, and it was the perfect, perfect thing for me to have read this January, and I enjoyed it thoroughly, while straining my eyes and enduring awful headaches from reading its 700 teeny pages on my phone. It was worth it though.
I haven’t got much to say really—it is an entire life in a book. Or is it? It’s rather the shadow-side of the six volumes of highly self-edited journals that L.M.M quite purposely left behind (oh yes, I have read them, I was unemployed one Canadian winter and I checked them out one after the other from the library). The thing about biography–the collecting of an objective look at a life from the outside, is that it is not going to be pretty (if done well), even if the writer adores the subject—because, well, life is not an Anne book.
Much of my teens and early twenties was spent trying to reconcile myself to the fact that life was not an Anne book.
Then, finally, I grew up a bit and decided that some things, tricky things, sexy things, feminist things, that LMM couldn’t write about were still worth pursuing. And that life, even if not steeped eternally in sunset colours, is still valuable.
I had long known that LMM’s life was not as charmed as her works, but before I read this biography I didn’t know how tortured a soul she really was. So very worried about what the neighbors would say, what her reviewers would say, what the people left on the Island would say. Forever living in (and re-working) her past, bitterly disappointed in her marriage, constantly manipulated and shamed by her eldest son in later life—its a detailed picture of a woman with such ambition, talent and goals…whose life didn’t work out the way she wanted. Also, her temperament could not always look on the bright side, she was pursued by depression even during good times. That I did know before, after all, this is the woman who gave us the quote “She will love deeply, she will suffer terribly, she will have glorious moments to compensate” –that so many girls write on their hearts as teens. (And, as you can see, it never really leaves you).
At several points in this engrossing read I was forced to admit that I don’t actually want to get so famous that biographies are written about me (not that I’m in any danger of it, but still)…To have everything probed, every foible researched and laid out…ugh, I can hardly stand my own recollections of embarrassing things I’ve done. This book has it all…but a life laid out like this can look so…well, the words that come to mind are choppy, futile, mis-matched, agonizing…even though Maude did have her fair share of (deserved) triumphs. Life can be so mundane, its pitfalls and annoyances so undeserved. And for what?
To quote Mr. Carson: “We shout and scream and wail and cry, but in the end we all must die.”
Life is just what happens. Too much rumination about it is never good. Having dreams and grand schemes for one’s life…well, it can be exhausting.
I was very glad to spend more time with Maude by reading this book, and looking at her from another angle. It was, I think, the best attempt to record and itemize and check the sources on a life that I have ever read—in comparison, the biography of Winston Churchill that I read last year was like an enormous formal portrait in a gilt frame, on the wall of a private house which charges you to go admire it. The Gift of Wings was very intimate —and yet. And yet we miss her her. We can’t catch what it was like to live behind her eyes.
We can either see her through her realest photo–this book, or we can see her through her journals (an insight into her psychology, in terms of how she wanted to be seen), or we can see her through the wonderful gifts she gave the world, which so many people keep on a shelf-shrine in their houses.
I think I will stick with the third means of seeing her. Through her own creations. It seems unreal that they were, most of them, half written from inspiration and half for sheer need of money. It doesn’t seem like lucre could ever enter into it. Without the necessity of providing for her family, some of her works may never have been.
This book was the best possible place for me to escape during a terribly rocky January. Now we are in a Europe-wide (really world-wide) very rocky February, but the less said about that for now, the better. This book inspired me to look more into what inspired Maude—clearly this was mostly the Romantic Poets. I have, of course, started a long and cumbersome plan to get to know this now hardly-taught sector of English literature, which formed like, all the literature Maude was raised on. She went to school before there was modernism, can you believe it? So I’m trying to listen to an audiobook of Wordsworth every now and then, and see if I am moved. I do like the rhymes, some of them are like lyrics from a half-forgotten song.
(Yes, Wordsworth is the one who “wandered lonely as a clud” if you were a teenage reader of the Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging series). “Clud” is just such a hard word to get out of your head, you never forget this immortal line after you have read it butchered in this way. Soooo yeah. If Wordsworth and I gel, then the door is open for Coleridge, but let’s see how we feel before we invite the ghost of Lord Byron. I can’t stand any more upheaval. Also I have no idea what the difference is between Yeats and Keats.
My blog has been kind enough to let me know that I didn’t get a hit on my blog – even from a bot – during the entirety of December. That’s fine. I’m obviously not in it for the fame. Now I am going to modestly recap a modest reading year, and see if next year might be better. On Jan. 3rd, today, with the sun shining, it does seem like 2022 might hold some promise. I read 12 books in 2021, of varying qualities, 9 of which I tried to review on the blog.
Sometimes though, I knew I was really pushing myself to do it, such as the blog for A Moor’s Tale, which I could have happily just enjoyed and let go, it really wasn’t part of some bigger story for me (although I of course tried to make out that it was) and I still dislike my blog about A. Pang’s book “Rest” so much (although it is probably my most “meticulous” review ever) that I might take it down. It just feels forced, as does the blog about reading Sherlock Holmes, now that I think of it. I would have rather that I had just mentioned somewhere that I had been enjoying these stories, and left it at that.
This year however, is the year. The year I finish my thesis (for realsies this time). And after that I expect to have fun fun fun (?) while job hunting, at least, there will be more time to read. Reading seems to be mostly now about trying to find good things. A long time ago I used to read whatever came into my hands, but now I am so, so aware of how short the time is, and I want to “read only the best books” as a professor once told me to. We-ell, I want to read some great things surely, and I have, in the last year, become much more aware of my propensities for biography, big fat history books, and the Greek and Roman Classics. I have thought A LOT regarding whether I just enjoy these things due to internalized misogyny, colonialism, or some kind of Westophilia, but no, I have decided, they are just what I enjoy.
However, as I probably always will have some “topic” percolating or “article” to be scratched away at from here on out (the tail end of otherwise cruddy 2021 did see the publication of my first article ever, thank you, thank you)…I do plan on spacing out the big tomes with some happy fun novels. I look forward to all of that!
A Material Analysis of My 2021 Reading Year:
Physical Books:
Feb – The Diary of A Country Parson 1752-1801 3/5
March – Jacob’s Room 4/5
April – Garlic and Sapphires (culinary journey through NY) 3/5
May – Women, Work and the Art of Savoir Faire 2/5
September – The Moor’s Tale 3/5 —actually quite proud of myself as I borrowed this book (and gave it back #sustainable)
August – How to Be a Victorian – 4/5
Kindle Ebook:
June – Rest (self-help) 3/5
July The Choice: Embrace the Possible (Holocaust memoir) 4/5
Audiobooks:
Jan – Walking With Destiny (Churchill Biography) 5/5
October- (3 quarters of) The Complete Sherlock Holmes 5/5
November – Convenience Store Woman 5/5
December – Einstein’s Dreams 4/5
A few quick remarks before I move on. One is that I think the year started out strong, and if I hadn’t been you know, struggling though my PhD it probably would have continued this way. But by April, I remember feeling pretty disillusioned about reading, and certainly about writing blogs. I was just so exhausted, I couldn’t think “what next” or muster much enthusiasm. And it shows. There were so, so many things I tried this year, that didn’t work. I tried this ok audiobook about Pliny the Younger in October, but I just didn’t have the bandwidth then, although I will finish it when I do, I didn’t know anything about either Pliny and I am totally hooked.
I didn’t like Rituals, another glossy self-help book, I tried the Tenant of Wildfell Hall but could NOT get onboard with it at all, the main lady was the definition of “not like other girls” and I actually cut off the audiobook in the middle of the scene of the main character’s quasi-love declarations “oh perhaps I could entertain a warm regard towards your person, my innermost blah blah and societal blah notwithstanding”—Yes, I gave up on romance-oriented Victorian literature forever this year. I also read the self-help (?) biography Women, Work and the Art of Savoir Faire by M. Guiliano and felt exactly nothing about it. I read a Holocaust memoir called “The Choice,” which was quite different, in terms of the fact that it was divided into two halves, the latter of which contained the story of how this traumatized woman actually suffered and worked to put her life back together after her experiences–I have read several Holocaust memoirs as I think it is important to do so, but this one was quite different, and it did impact me, although I don’t wish to write about it on the blog. It does remind me however, to someday read Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.
And I would say that I was quite annoyed with reading in the Summer/Fall, with the exception of “How to Be a Victorian” which I had a lovely time with. Otherwise, I just couldn’t find much that I liked, despite seeming to have so many options at my fingertips. Convenience Store Woman really saved my year on the level of enjoyment, without it flashing neon in November I would look back on 2021 as a pretty dull reading year. At the very end of the year I enjoyed the short audiobook “Einstein’s Dreams” by Alan Lightman, which is a collection of about 30 (?) different ways one could imagine “time” working. It was interesting and trippy.
Yes, reading-wise there were quite a few ups and downs, and stops and starts. I don’t know if this was a result of not planning my year at all—however, I don’t want to plan much for the foreseeable future because I don’t want to stress myself out unnecessarily. I did wonder, at certain times the past year, if 12 books really was too many books–kind of a thought that makes me sad, as I do think that humans OUGHT to have leisure time enough to read a book a month, this seems like a basic right— but also I am now really into letting a book settle inside me and change me, and that takes time. I want to give certain books space to breathe and live in me a bit, before moving on to the next.
I am toying with making it a rule to only write about 6 books next year (although I still “expect” to read 12), but not every book is worth writing that much about, because not every book impacts you that deeply, or is so enjoyable that one has to say something profound about it. I may then also feel more free to write ad hoc on this blog, about topics as they come up. I did write some quasi-essays last year but didn’t “publish” them on here. That may be the next step, we shall see.
I still like the idea of reading diaries in February, and I might let these weird propensities guide me, I need to reconnect with my Virginia Woolf project, and I think this year, when the thesis is done and I’m staring into a wilderness, I will try my first Nietzsche (I’ve heard that On Morals is easiest for a beginner). Other than that, by the time my thesis is done my blog will have achieved its third birthday (!!!!) and I am going to do a special post, trawling through the whole thing picking up dropped threads—books to follow up on, but more so–ideas to pursue. There are notions which I want to revisit sprinkled across this thing, and I will go back and gather any that still have luster.
Book Choice for Sept. 2021: Convenience Store Woman by S. Murata.
There is something so poisonous about self-help. Maybe I’ve over-indulged in it lately, thinking that it is easier to put into my tired brain than fiction is…but I am paying the price in self-doubt (which weighs quite heavy on the shoulders). Basically, I thought I would read some items of the self-help/improvement genre in order to hear things that I already know, but to really hammer them home and convince myself I should make the effort. But what did I really gain from reading, and re-reading that book Rest this year? I suppose I acknowledged the workings of my subconscious mind in a blog post, which were things I hadn’t really told anyone before, but otherwise? My takeaway was that I should exercise? There are probably many more lyrical books extolling the benefits of what will always be for me, psyching myself up for taking head-clearing walks and stretching. This might be all I can do, or imagine doing at the present.
(I am having regrets: I think I might have “gained more” on a spiritual level if I had put the same amount of effort into reading Alex’s Pang’s other book [which really sounds like the popularization of a PhD thesis : “Empire and the Sun, Victorian Solar Eclipse Expeditions]; definitely not as saleable as Rest but seemingly 1,000 times more soulful).
There are two things: I have realized that self-help books just make (anxious?) people feel more that they aren’t doing enough and will never integrate enough ‘right practices’ into their lives. Self-help books really flesh-out levels of perfection that you will never reach, but now, in possession of ALL the details about what a truly community-minded nature-worshipping triathalon surfer would do, you can only see what you don’t do (and will probably never do). Are self-help books just physical embodiments of the Fantasy Self (which is a super helpful concept by the way); should they rather be called self-flagellation books?
(I know that some of this is a product of my current mindset. I’m stressed ok!?)
So, trying to bring the ranting down a notch, I will just say that writing this out has made me more aware of what I do need. And those are stories. I need escapism. It’s not a bad thing, now. I have read a quote from a scientist wherein he states proudly that he gave up reading novels while he was doing his PhD, and only read non-fiction science related books. He thinks that helped his work. Maybe it did. I feel like it might have made Jack also a dull boy, but who am I to judge, I am doing the exact same thing. I’ve cut out all the juice, the verve, except for The Moor’s Tale, which was a book that kind of snuck in by surprise this year and I still managed to turn it into something rather didactic. It’s also not a very juicy book. Ugh. Oh my god—
I need what they call women’s literature.
I need feelings, experiences, at the end of the world. Because it feels like we are there.
And there, gentle readers, you have it. The story of how I ended my year.
I read Convenience Store Woman by S. Murata, it’s a tiny book, only 3 hours long on audible, and I heard it in tiny chunks, because that is all I could take in. I have discovered that I am terrible at listening to fiction. I have discussed this problem with my cousin who clearly is an auditory learner, and who drives 2 hours a day for work, she told me that after she discovered audiobooks she has never looked back and “could read a book a week” this way. Wow. I can barely follow a fictional story auditorily from sentence to sentence, but I am a very fast reader of physical books (not a popular thing to voice, many people who read a lot and whom you expect to be fast often say they are slow readers, but I can go very fast, and retain it; it’s my superpower). My cousin and I have decided that people are either one way or the other (and that maaaaaybe geniuses can be both).
Well, I loved Convenience Store Woman. I had a lot of thoughts while reading it, not least because I had heard its narrator described as an “everywoman”; but really, she is not. She has some mild form of a not-able-to-understand-social-cues disorder (I am sure I ought to rephrase that), its not JUST that she is skeptical of society’s norms to the point where she cannot follow them. She cannot follow them, first of all, and this is used to show how silly, and how learned, many of our norms are. But a lot of things are phrased as if she can’t understand why she should do this or that. And that is fine, I am not saying she is deficient in any way, it’s one of those cases where her simple style of life might seem cleverer than a lot of what we put ourselves through trying to be “normal” and reach a satisfactory “lifestyle.”
I really, really enjoyed it, even the creepy male character who was a parody of a parody and never stopped spouting the same garbage. Of course he was hollow and the epitome of lazy, empty writing—his ideas are lazy and empty and, if you are a woman and you haven’t been outright told by some lazy thinker that your expiry date is near, then you can disregard him and say its bad representation of men in the book or something. But of course, if you are a woman, someone has told you the exact same type of nonsense as he comes out with before, overtly, to your face.
The main interesting thing about this book for me was that the narrator finds a place for herself in a capitalist hellscape that is so dystopian that this book could have never been part of my 10th grade reading. I don’t know why, but at the height of peace and prosperity in Canada circa 1999 all 16 year olds were subjected to a curriculum of EXCLUSIVELY dystopian novels. Oh my god, let’s see if I can remember: The Handmaid’s Tale, 1984, Animal Farm, Fahrenheit 451, possibly Slaughterhouse Five, possibly Brave New World (but I don’t think anyone concentrated on that one because it’s a bit boring) there were others, I think one about the nuclear bomb…My group concentrated on 1984, I remember dressing up as the main girl in blue overalls with a red scarf around my waist—the things you remember ehhhh. Anyway, I believe this course of learning was to make us “critical thinkers” (and to make sure we never got interested in Communism). It was pretty dramatic however, end of the world stuff, war; the things that would naturally capture the attention of 16 year olds living in one of the most stable places on earth.
The point I am trying to make, however, is that they are never going to teach Convenience Store Woman (even though there isn’t a whiff of sex in it). Not only because I am sure that, after the 9/11 shock, and a general dumbing-down and upping of the feel-good quality of education, they don’t teach a whole year of dystopias anymore (because this would be too scary in a time that is much more informed about the calamities happening around the world daily and global warming), but also because CSW is too bleak. It’s not about dramatically resisting the dystopia as individuals whose spirits cannot be beaten. It’s about learning to function in the dystopia, and the sickest thing is that you cheer for the narrator when she finds her way to a place in the dystopia that makes her content. You are like, “Go Girl, You Work How You Want In This Dystopia! Live On Your Own Terms!” (in this dystopia).
She didn’t need to subjugate her hopes and dreams (we were big on hopes and dreams in the 90s) to the will of the Convenience Store. She never had any.
And the reader hopes, that they could ever be so happy. Today.
In July, I went on a one-week vacation, and, well, I just had a hard time calming down and enjoying myself. I did catch some Rest in the end, but the staring-out distantly kind, unaware of what you are even processing, and I certainly didn’t “rest productively” as this book tries to show you how to do. In the end, just by being away from the internet and housework mainly, I did rest, but not enough to feel rejuvenated enough to go out and do things, I just lay on the beach. (Which wasn’t bad, I was lucky just to be able to have a holiday!)
However, as I was clearly a bit lost at the time, I did what all over-intellectualizers do in times of (minor) crisis–I ordered a book about the problem. I bought Rest on my kindle app so that I could have it immediately, and then I spent much of the time reading it rather than expressly relaxing, because as I said above, I just could not chill. But it did help me understand how I might (take baby steps to) develop some systems which might help me work more sustainably in future and avoid burnout.
I’m going to go through this book making remarks on each section, in the order each appears in the table of contents; not to give a summary per say, but as usual, only my personal reflections.
I do want to make two things clear first though: One, that this book is, let’s just say, an idealization of what is possible. I don’t even have a job at present, so it is theoretically possible that I could structure my time in any way, but even so I don’t have the time or resources to do all of the activities Rest promotes. I haven’t read “Daily Rituals: How Artists Work” by Mason Currey, but I used to read the blog that book is based on, and I think the suggestions given in Pang’s book might be slightly more achievable than attempting to imitate the lives of artists as described Currey’s book, mainly because most of them worked during times when servants were plentiful and cheap [outrageously exploited]. However, Pang does not mention the concept of “housework” once in his book; not how to integrate it into one’s day or whether it is depleting or gives one time to think.
Not once, as I recall. Hmm, I wonder what the target demographic for this book could be.
Pang does mention childcare once or twice, but dishes, laundry, and the fact that floors don’t sweep themselves doesn’t get a look in.
Oh yeah…and COOKING. (It’s not that important, unless everyone in your household wants to, you know, keep living).
[Insert Rant—I just hate it when the essential tasks involved in keeping a home livable/staying alive are skated over, and I still don’t know how one is supposed to properly recuperate from their work in interesting / exciting / stimulating / creative ways when one’s mind or to-do list are filled with a myriad of domestic tasks].
Secondly, I just want to say that the first time I read this book, I retained very little other than a strong feeling that I really MUST integrate some type of sport into my days. Not just “taking long walks” as 18th and 19th century people did, around their estates, which somehow was enough to keep them fit; but actual heart-pumping, challenging exercise. Rest contains extensive discussion on how regular vigorous exercise improves and protects your brain in one chapter, which may have finally been enough of an inducement for me to prioritize this–although building such a routine is a whole other topic, leading to the necessity of buying another book on kindle (probably).
However, if a book lights even one burner inside you that stays lit, I would say it was worth the money.
———————————————————————————————————————————-
This book opens with discussions of how people want to work, work, work harder, but they ignore taking the rest that will allow them to, basically, work better. Pang’s thesis is that Rest Time is as important as Work Time, which a lot of people will find difficult to take on board, so he goes on to explain what resting properly can do for you.
Part 1: “Stimulating Creativity” discusses how you can structure your days to work better. Simply put, don’t expect more than four good hours of work (with total concentration) to be possible for you (I have been field-testing this for years, and yes, I agree).
Much of Part 1 involves scientific studies, showing the reader the benefits of various practices, particularly taking naps (there was a LOT of brain imaging involved in this section that I don’t particularly want to re-live). There is an interesting discussion in the book of stopping work when you are “going down-hill,” as in, leaving a thought, a sentence or solution unfinished, in order to pick it back up the next time you sit to your work. I was rather gratified that there was a term for this, as I practice it often. I have also found that you don’t really have to think to the end of a problem at your desk. At the end of your workday, admit to yourself that you may not yet know what the answer is, but get up anyway and let your subconscious do the solving.
I have found this to be a fascinating and productive practice as I write my thesis and I wish there was a whole book on it. As I am trying to discover the meaning of ancient symbols, sometimes I spend hours studying the contexts they appear in (because I haven’t got any other clue to their meaning, aside from the fact that that the symbol looks like a sheep, for example), but then I quit for the day, tired but not defeated, and open to suggestions.
It is not uncommon that I will wake up at 3am to get a drink or go to the bathroom, and become consciously aware that my mind was working hard on all the potential meanings of the sheep-symbol, using everything it has ever heard or imagined. Good work, subconscious brain. I went through quite a productive time with my subconscious in August/September, but this particular well seems a bit dry lately, I can’t quite get into the same sort of flow. It probably requires a lot of energy, something that is really lagging now.
This last topic, of using your brain without really noticing that you are, dovetails nicely with Pang’s discussion of what sleep can do for you. It’s always good for me to read things which convince me to sleep more and to try and enjoy it more. Personally I have never got over the adult freedom that lets one choose their own bedtime, so I’m like a kid who never wants to call it a night. I am not sure I’ll ever get over how boring the need for sleep is, so I appreciate the frequent reminders that it is a good thing.
Part II of this book is called “Sustaining Creativity” and discusses the topics of recovery, exercise, deep play and sabbaticals. I could not recall what was in the “recovery” section without reading it for a third time; ah, it is about how to switch off, methods by which you stop thinking about work, such as isolating yourself in a private cottage unknown to your colleagues like Eisenhower did during WWII (soo attainable). But really, this section is about how to take a vacation. How long they should be, and what kind of activities you should spend your time doing.
Pang writes that people like to relax in ways that give them a feeling of mastery, and gave the example of code-breakers in WWII relaxing with games of chess. Whew. I know there was no TV then, and it may just be that I have an irrational, and unwarranted, hatred of chess, but jeez that is not how I would like to relax after a work day, and I basically work on codes myself, so I think the comparison is fair. Earlier this year I did have an idea to repaint old, found ceramic objects in subversive ways, and even bought the paints for it, but that urge has since abated (with one project started). Jigsaw puzzles feel too messy, I’m not a musician, and I’d rather cut my hand off than do sudoku. The search for non-annoying restful activities (that aren’t housework) continues…
And finally, the exercise chapter. (I am skipping the sabbatical chapter as it is not applicable to me presently, although it could be said that my PhD has been a [very challenging] sabbatical from modern life). This chapter is about exercise with a capital E, and for some reason, discusses mostly unrealistic (for the average person) activities, like mountain climbing and sailing. However, there was enough science-y blather about grey matter and white matter in the brain, and staying young forever and sustainable scholarship and suchlike that I have since actually bought (yes every life-change involves purchasing something) myself a stationary bike, against the cold winter evenings coming.
Its actually quite cool, it’s pre-digital, and I believe of DDR manufacture. You crank a knob on the side to go into a harder gear, and it has this cute old-timey speedometer. I like to think that an Communist Olympian of the 1970s trained on it. It was only 25 euros and therefore quite attainable, just take a look on the internet, there will be hundreds of people attempting to sell exercise equipment that they brought home and promptly started hanging towels on. There is a towel hanging to dry on mine right now. However, I use it sometimes and am experimenting. I am practicing getting into a rhythm.No, it’s not surfing or running triathlons or that sport where you ski cross-country while shooting a gun. However, it may actually contribute to regular exercise and living forever.
Clearly, Rest compiles a lot of TIPS. Tips you have seen filtered about on the internet before, but it is well-organized and the scientific discussions, while sometimes a bit boring, do make you feel compelled to do (some) of the practices it suggests. Some, like naps, however, you should probably just discard. Ain’t nobody in the modern West got time for that. Few of us are Winston Churchill. We don’t have private napping bunkers, handy bathing facilities, a valet and a driver. I love the man, but it was a time and place.
The question remains, however: Should all the rest we take ultimately serve to allow us to do more work?
Or should we try to just live, like once or twice a week?
I take issue with the whole premise that we should be doing all these things FOR our work. All of these practices are intended, in the end, to make you more productive. Sleep more productively. Cycle for your grey matter. I get it, but I hate it. Where has daydreaming gone? I spent my formative years daydreaming, and then I spent at least five years, after I had learned about productivity, hating myself for having spent my teens and early twenties in this way. And yet—it was better. No, I never got anything done but damn, Ifelt the hours in a way that just isn’t possible anymore.
Maybe that feeling is also a product of getting older. I want to produce some (specific) things during my time on earth, but I already know that I don’t want to produce all the things. I already have a list of one project, several articles, certain topics to learn about fully (and a few choice novels to read) that will basically take up the rest of my life.
I wonder whether novelists approach life like they should be writing an infinite number of books? When do they know they are done? When they run out of time?
Anyway, coming back to the point, the intent of Rest is to help you do the work that you want to do. (If you even know what that work is, you are indeed a lucky person already).
What I don’t agree with is that all one’s “play” should support one’s work, or feed into it in some way.
Like, what about reading books for pure enjoyment or entertainment? What about making weird collages from magazines that don’t mean anything? Or that deep trance you can get into while rummaging through old stuff at flea markets?
