Wednesday, December 29, 2004
Another New Year's Resolution to be Broken
by Tom Bozzo
Before the holidays, my stack of reading material included:
Then I was out doing some Christmas book shopping, and couldn't resist a copy of Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mister Norrell at 30% off list.
At my mother-in-law's, I picked up her copy of Cornel West's Democracy Matters out of curiosity.
At the Edina Galleria this afternoon, with a half-hour to kill while Suzanne was shopping elsewhere, I couldn't resist trade paperbacks of Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation and Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.
In a perfect world, I'd blog in the early morning and read in the late evening. The former, however, is subject to the toddler wake-up schedule. When John is up early, the temptation is to reclaim blogging time from the end of the day. The extent to which this has happened makes the above material look like a few months' bedtime reading. Add the presence of the west side Borders three blocks from the office, and the probability that this resolution will be broken looks close to unity.
This is a resolution I shouldn't even bother making. Nevertheless, I really should at least try to get through my reading backlog before I bring more books in the house.
Before the holidays, my stack of reading material included:
- Thomas Pynchon's Vineland, which I'm about a third through re-reading;
- Neal Stephenson's The System of the World, on deck (the end of his 'Baroque Cycle' magnum opus, at least);
- Robert Rubin's In An Uncertain World, reading delayed due to post-election depression;
- Gene Wolfe's Sword and Citadel, a trade paperback compilation of the latter half of the 'Book of the New Sun' tetralogy.
Then I was out doing some Christmas book shopping, and couldn't resist a copy of Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mister Norrell at 30% off list.
At my mother-in-law's, I picked up her copy of Cornel West's Democracy Matters out of curiosity.
At the Edina Galleria this afternoon, with a half-hour to kill while Suzanne was shopping elsewhere, I couldn't resist trade paperbacks of Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation and Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.
In a perfect world, I'd blog in the early morning and read in the late evening. The former, however, is subject to the toddler wake-up schedule. When John is up early, the temptation is to reclaim blogging time from the end of the day. The extent to which this has happened makes the above material look like a few months' bedtime reading. Add the presence of the west side Borders three blocks from the office, and the probability that this resolution will be broken looks close to unity.
