I think I’m going to do it.
Something I haven’t done in six years or so when one day I was reading a book about Sudan, the next day I went into labour, and the day after that I had a baby and my focus switched somewhat.
I think I am going to stop reading a book.
Book in question (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath). It is too thick for me to read while laying down and hurts my wrist to hold it. I forget from the top of the page to the bottom who the people are, with the exception of Sylvia Plath herself (I’d probably remember Ted Hughes too, but we haven’t got there yet). The endnotes are strangely all marked by an $$n$$, each and every one, rather than increasing numbers and they’re endnotes rather than footnotes so I’m always flipping back and forth. I love the writing, but without plot, I just flounder. Geoff and I talked about this in the car by Aulac last week, my need for story telling (there’s a bunch of Douglas Coupland quotes I could put here about that, but with kitten on lap, I’m not getting up to look for them). It’s why I don’t read much non-fiction, especially philosophy texts. Geoff loves philosophy and has a minor. I have a vague idea that Plato came after Socrates. That’s about it. And I have one philosophy joke:
Q: Can I borrow your copy of The Critique of Pure Reason?
A: No, I’m sorry, you Kant.
But I need narrative and a journal’s narrative is navel gazing and circular and second-guessing.
I’m two hundred of seven hundred pages in. I don’t know whether to read twenty pages a day (takes about an hour) until I finish, or give up and return the book to the library now so that a better person can glean something from the fact that Sylvia Plath uses the word rape more frequently than I would have suspected. Let’s see if I can make a poll.
[poll id=”2″]
I’m all about the plugins this week.
I have a sleeping kitten on my lap, so no matter what, life’s pretty decent today.