Finding: Yourself Unable to Read?

Illustration by Kate Beaton www.harkavagrant.com

Greetings and salutations, readers!

Have you ever started to read something and then, almost suddenly, you realize you have absolutely no patience to finish reading that thing? Maybe you start skipping words and sentences, only to dismiss paragraphs and ignore entire pages, as your gaze reaches the edges of the papers you're holding in your hands, and suddenly you realize you've been woolgathering and, no, dang it we do not have the space to raise a dog, we are not that close, and besides, Keanu, you are between blockbuster roles and. . . Oh. Where was I? Oh!

The absurd thing is that you know you have all the time you want to take to read this! But, darn it if this is not the most daunting task before you, even if it is keeping you from having to reheat your leftovers before slipping in to the coma that is post-work-pre-sleep self-care.

Here you are with an entire afternoon to stretch in this sunbeam and find out exactly what's going to try killing the momentum of these charming main characters, only to realize it's your attention span that’s lining them up for the slaughter! What a bummer.

We all have been through this, some of us have been coping with it for years. I have a couple of thoughts on fixing this problem, and I hope you'll indulge me because I have made it work (made myself get back into what I’ve been reading) time and again, and I'm actually about to put one or two of these ideas into practice right now so that I can finish off Brandon Sanderson's Warbreaker, Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook, and Goodbye to All That, edited by Sari Botton (reviewed here by Chelsea) before my local library sets its mildewing carpets after me one of these nights. Please observe the following as individual ways to kick yourself back into high gear, and don’t hesitate to combine these tactics!:

1) A change of scenery! Nothing drags the doldrums by the hair, kicking and screaming, and launches it out the door quite like leaving wherever you are, with your desired reading, and going elsewhere, anywhere, whocareswhere!

2) Your posture! You may not be sitting in a way that's good for your spine and buttocks or neck and eyes. Where's the light? Get that on the pages, out of your eyes, sit or lay out so you aren't all tangled up and distracted by your temporary vessel on this journey through the mortal plane!

3) There is a war on, yes, like, all the time. You're not trying to do anything about it. You're reading, baby! Do one thing at a time. Turn off the streaming video platform, stop searching for things to add to your already-cumbersome playlist of weird noise you thought was good last week (when your armpit hair was the right level of not-itchy), and get back to those words!

4) You do not have to try to impress anyone with what you're reading, and, conversely, no one has to be put off by what you're reading. Just read the thing. Anyone who has any remark that could interrupt your time reading is not doing enough reading to be worth your notice or mention.

I hope one or all of these things helps you as much as they do me. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm happy to share this with you all, But I'd Rather Be Reading!

- Frank

Review: Goodbye to All That edited by Sari Botton

This is my first stab at a book review. I consume New York City-specific historical non-fiction like water (not often enough, and I find myself constantly thirsting for more), and though most of what I read is neighborhood-oriented, I occasionally like to step outside of that norm and read stories written by others who have experienced this city more recently and from an array of varying perspectives. A few years ago, I read Never Can Say Goodbye, also edited by Sari Botton, a collection of essays by twenty-seven men and women who came to New York City and found, through every trial and tribulation, every set-back and triumph, they just could not imagine leaving. I was still green at that time, still a transplant from New England trying to find my footing, and I was enthralled and inspired reading tales of others who persevered in the face of so much failure.

Now, nearly four and a half years in, I can confidently say that I’ve found my place here. I, myself, cannot imagine leaving New York City in the foreseeable future, so, for a change of pace (after reading an in-depth history of the Bowery dating from the early Dutch settlement to the present), I read Goodbye to All That, stories by twenty-eight women writing their own versions of Joan Didion’s eponymous 1968 essay about loving and leaving New York. Some of these writers simply fell out of love with the city and moved on, others ran, nearly screaming, from the concrete jungle, and a select few were pulled away only to claw their way back.

I felt a joyful smile creep across my mouth each time one of these women mentioned one of my own East Village haunts, a bookshop I frequent, or the Upper West Side Jewish deli where I buy my half-sour pickles. I felt myself relating to some of their frustrations and delighting in their successes – it’s not often I have the opportunity to cheer on an author. Fellow transplants came impassioned with romantic ideas of what the city should be like, with big dreams and big hearts. The city became not only their home, but also this kind of living organism, constantly changing, always there and available until it wasn’t, and even then, they stayed.

“That’s the thing about New York: no one ever wants to leave. Throngs of hopeful protagonists arrive with their dreams and diminutive bank accounts. It’s only in disaster movies that you see anyone wanting to get out, and it’s because a meteor is coming or aliens are attacking.” – Liza Monroy, A War Zone for Anyone Looking for Love

I found that the natives had a radically different take on the city than the ardent transplants, often reflecting on the city with contempt. In Rebecca Wolff’s essay entitled So Long, Suckers, she details, with absolutely no attempt at affection for her birthplace (she calls it a giant sinking pile of crap), the observations she made of what happens to people, native and otherwise, who try to stay in the city:

“In New York City these days I see loads and loads of formerly brilliant people … who have “stayed too long at the Fair,” to use Joan’s wistful archaic turn of phrase, who are baffled and internally conflicted as to why they can’t admit that New York sucks so hard. Why they can’t draw the proper conclusion. That if they are to work all the time in order to pay super-high rents that make it impossible for them to do their art, if they never have a chance to see the people they came here to see, who are less brilliant now that they are muffled by the smog of wrongness that hangs over New York … if they are living somewhere that is giving them less than they are giving to it, then they should leave.”

Natives and transplants alike, no one was immune to eventual disillusionment. Their rents were too high, they couldn’t find their footing, the (in most cases) literary world kept smacking them down, personal relationships began or went up in flames, and, in some cases, it just made more sense to leave than it did to stay. Reading these varied experiences of the city I’m living in have made me question what it will look like one day if or when I decide to leave this city. I’m not ready yet, I don’t feel that I’ve stayed too long at the Fair, and I can honestly say I have no idea where I would go. I’ve been saying for a few years now that if I moved back to the woods of New Hampshire I would die of boredom – to leave a place where I can have anything at any hour to a place with absolutely nothing? I think not.

I recommend this collection of essays to anyone yearning for a different perspective of New York City. I’d fathom a guess it may be hard to relate to for a reader that has not experienced the city, but the stories have enough broad strokes to make them accessible to any audience. The diverse viewpoints make for a fun and interesting read, and since most stories are only ten pages or so, the collection moves at a very comfortable pace.

- Chelsea

More But I'd Rather Be Reading! here.

Review: Soul Music by Sir Terry Pratchett

This one definitely ranks as one of my favorite Discworld novels. I won't pretend I have anything less than fondness for Terry Pratchett. His legacy is his tremendous contribution to satirical fiction, the intelligently-written fantasy, and dozens of novels with too many fully-realized characters to count off the top of anyone's head. Widely known for his Discworld novels, the man left our Roundworld much too soon (isn't that always the way?) and left us with a treasure trove of excellent and hilarious books, including the soon-to-screens-everywhere Good Omens (written with Neil Gaiman.)

Now, for some Soul Music: an irreverently reverent and pedal-to-the-metal take on rock'n'roll and the age old question of What Gives Anyone the Right to Decide What's Fair When Bad People Get to Be Bad and Good People Don't Get Good? There’s so much craft and clarity to Sir Terry’s work, especially as you begin what always becomes a bizarrely intricate plot with more players than you can shake a stick at. (You've got favorites like The Librarian and Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler here along with Death and his granddaughter Susan, and Death of Rats, and, oh man, you think I kept track? No. You don't have to.) You are in for a treat, whenever you open a Discworld novel, and Soul Music is no exception.

A Plotted Summary?
Imp de Celyn (is he an elf?) wants to be a musician in the big city, but the music industry tells him and his pals NO. But guess what? A mysterious shop has not-at-all-conspicuously appeared out of nowhere to sell him a magic guitar that starts him off on the journey of Music With Rocks In! Meanwhile, Death has decided to abscond. Who should search him out but Susan, the granddaughter Death doesn't know she is! Susan soon grapples with the same question her father, Death's former apprentice, once did: why should she be swinging the scythe? Susan sets out to challenge fate and mortality itself, and finds herself saving the life of Imp just as the dude that rocks sets off on his defiant journey to be a musician. Will the mortal plane come undone? Why are the wizards of Unseen University suddenly so unruly as... well, this, this time? And what is Music With Rocks In? Terry takes us on a fantastic whirlwind adventure across the Disc that stumps even Lord Vetinari.

In Review:
I have been taking my time finishing my first read-through the entire series so I can say that for sure, given the disease that took him from this ‘verse and that of the Disc’s, but when I find myself utterly enthralled by a book like this? Sir Terry and his Discworld are necessary and incredible: Susan and her grandfather, Death, are written with such love and depth, they read real as real. And there is a masterful display of plotting here, in a story with so many characters and Things Happening, but you don’t get exhausted or confused by it all at all. I found myself grinning ear to ear whenever I wasn't laughing aloud, nodding and grunting in appreciation and agreement, turning pages like my fingers were on the fret of a guitar. This is such a fun and intelligent book! 4.5/5

- Frank

More But I'd Rather Be Reading! here.