A weekend of reading
I finally bought a copy of the new Harry Potter book last night around dinnertime. I finished it early this afternoon. Like the four earlier ones, it’s a good book — not great, but definitely good. I don’t think I’ve ever seen characters age before in the way Harry and his friends do between this book and the last one. I’m used to stories about teenagers growing up focusing on teens becoming mature adults, rather than pre-teens becoming teens who are sultry at times, argumentative, and confused about romance. I’m sure it’s just that I’ve missed a lot of teenage literature, but it’s nice to see the dose of reality that I haven’t seen before.
It’s a bit strange to realize that in the past week I’ve read about 1200 pages in books — the Harry Potter book, Moneyball, and Neil Gaiman’s Smoke and Mirrors, but it doesn’t seem like an unusual week. If anything, it was a bit busy and I didn’t have as much time to read as I typically do. Compare that, though, to a Slashdot story from a month ago where the poster said he had a month free and wanted to find a good book to read. I don’t fault him for wanting to read — that’s a good start in and of itself — but a book a month seems like so little. Maybe I’m just weird and nobody in their right mind reads three books a week while working full-time. I don’t know. [On a side note, I'd sure love to have a girlfriend who read a lot, but it's amazing how hard it is to find someone like that. I mean, how would we find each other if we both spend a lot of time in the usually solitary activity of reading? But that's an issue for another post, I suppose.]
EJ Said,
July 1, 2003 @ 11:28 am
Hi Eric,
I don’t have any personal experience with these services, but you could always try one of the match making sites on the Internet. Here’s a good article about the phenomenon: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/29/national/29DATE.html
josh lucas Said,
July 2, 2003 @ 5:00 pm
Eric -
I don’t think it’s weird to read 3 books in a week while working full-time. I’ve found that reading non-technical stuff during the week is one thing that keep me sane.
I try to read ficiton/non-fiction during the week and then any technical stuff on the weekends. It doesn’t alway happen but when it does, I am seemingly happier.
Laura Said,
July 3, 2003 @ 1:16 pm
What scares me about your comparison is that I could easily see myself at either end of that spectrum.
I’ve pretty much accepted that my basic nature is such that I’ll occasionally go months at a time without picking up a book, and also occasionally spend a couple weeks averaging a few hundred pages a day. So three books in a week while working full-time wouldn’t be at all unusual for me, but neither would having to struggle to finish one book during a month’s vacation.
And in response to your side note–you could always try picking up women in libraries…