Finished

Just finished reading Zadie Smith's Swing Time, the novel for this month's meeting of the book club in Liverpool. When I got the book, three days ago, I figured that with 10 days remaining before the meeting, I'd have to read 50 pages a day in order to be finished on time. That Included squeezing in 50 pages on the morning of the meeting, which I wasn't sure I could do.

Three days later, problem solved, the book is read. Which is how it used to be for me. One summer when I was a kid, in junior high school, I think, I got on a sci-fi kick with my friend Denny Nelson. He loved sci-fi, was a brilliant student, and a good friend. Later on, after high school and college, I heard that he'd actually become a scientist.

Anyway, we spent the summer reading the 50- and 75-cent paperbacks of Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and Ray Bradbury. At one point, I decided that I was gonna read a book a day, which I did for a week.

But more recently, it's become increasingly difficult to sit through more than a paragraph or two, much less a full page, without getting up, pacing, focusing on something else and then, maybe, coming back to the book in that same hour or even, sometimes, the same day.

With this book, to be honest, I don't even know how many pages I read on which day. Once I got started, it was almost like the old days. And I'm really disinclined to say why that might be. I know that part of it has to do with me and part of it is the book. But for now, it seems enough to say that this is what has happened, that this is how it is.

And to maybe mention that, last night, I started reading it again...

LPK
Dreamwidth
2.15.2018