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In Memoriam
My father passed away a week and a half ago. I don’t normally go into anything too personal here, but in a way he’s very relevant to this weblog. I’ve never met someone who read as much as he did. It was what he loved to do, more than anything else. He would always have a book or an e-reader with him. I like to think I read quite a bit, especially when I’m really enjoying a novel, but he kept up the pace constantly for his entire life. He’s the only person I’ve ever seen read in a casino. He could read fast too. He’d often recommend a series…
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Housekeeping vs. The Dirt
Housekeeping vs. the Dirt by Nick Hornby Published: 2006 Nick Hornby’s thoughts on his monthly reading and book buying habits continue with this second collection of his Believer column. I still wasn’t entirely sure what the Believer was, so I just hopped over to their website and had a quick look. I’m very pleased to announce that it’s not a Christian magazine, as I had briefly suspected. They describe the magazine as follows: The Believer is a monthly magazine where length is no object. There are book reviews that are not necessarily timely, and that are very often very long. There are interviews that are also very long. We will…
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The Polysyllabic Spree
The Polysyllabic Spree: A Hilarious and True Account of One Man’s Struggle With the Monthly Tide of the Books He’s Bought and the Books He’s Been Meaning to Read by Nick Hornby Published: 2004 I’ve been meaning to pick this up for ages. It’s a collection of Nick Hornby’s monthly column, from a magazine called The Believer, where he discusses what he read over the previous month, as well as what he didn’t read. It’s essentially a professional book blog. I don’t want anyone writing in to point out that I spend too much money on books, many of which I will never read. I know that already. I certainly…
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The Classics Club
I’ve decided to join The Classics Club. I’ve been reading more classics lately, and I’d like to continue that trend. And I can’t resist a good list. The goal is to read 50+ classic novels in five years. Will I be blogging in five years? Will I be alive in five years? Will society as we know it still exist in five years? I can answer none of these questions for you, but this will be fun up until any of that happens. This is really just my current classic literature wishlist. If I read a classic that’s not on the list, I’ll swap one out. I haven’t really read…
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Your Brain on Fiction
The New York Times posted an interesting article on the neuroscience behind reading, how the brain reacts to the metaphors and descriptions in the same way it might react to the actual physical experience. The brain, it seems, does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life; in each case, the same neurological regions are stimulated. Keith Oatley, an emeritus professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto (and a published novelist), has proposed that reading produces a vivid simulation of reality, one that “runs on minds of readers just as computer simulations run on computers.” — Annie Murphy Paul,…
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Late Resolutions
I’ve been thinking about goals lately, mainly because it’s a lot easier than trying to achieve them. I missed out on the whole New Years thing, being sans blog at the time, so I thought I’d make a few late (and admittedly slightly wimpy) resolutions for the remainder of the year. It might be fun to check in every now and then and see what progress I’ve made. So at the end of 2011, I want to: Be 10 lbs lighter – I spent last spring mountain biking and being relatively fit, relative to previous years anyway. Since then, a combination of laziness and health issues (the health issues being…