Monday, March 28, 2005

Is this a learning disability?

I have a hard time finishing a novel in a short period of time.

It's not that I don't want to read it, because I do. It's that I find myself reading so many other things that it takes me forever to get through any one of them.

For example, I started reading Linda Nagata's The Bohr Maker several months ago. I enjoyed it, but I am about a third of the way through and haven't picked it up in weeks. I started David Brin's Earth about three weeks ago, and it is on my nightstand with about ten other books. I read Ramez Naam's More Than Human in one sitting, but that doesn't count--it's not fiction. Yesterday I picked up Ken MacLeod's The Stone Canal and read only the alternating chapters set near the present. When I got up today I read the first two chapters of The Cassini Division. Oh, and last night, I read the chapters in Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate that deal with hot-button issues.

I also go to Barnes and Noble about once a week and read every new science or progressive political magazine on the shelf.

Clearly, something is wrong with me.

The question also becomes, well, I've got The Bohr Maker and Earth both in progress, so which should I finish first? I've enjoyed them both about equally. Earth is longer, but The Bohr Maker has more eyeball kicks. I think I'll pick up Peter Singer's Practical Ethics and refresh myself on the preference utilitarian position on environmental protection. Oh, and what was that thing I read in--

But you get the idea.

So sad. And yet so wonderful.

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1 comment:

  1. I do the same, I've got stacks of books I've bought but am kinda-sorta in the middle of reading...

    I saw this list once of "Reader's Rights"; it included "I have the right to not finish a book.", so I guess that guilt is universal.

    It depends on the book though, b/c I'll fly through a good book in a couple of days, reluctantly stopping to eat, sleep, and go to that thing... uhm.. yeah- work.

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