I am ashamed to admit that I am the kind of person who can abandon a novel before I reach the ending. For example, I started Catch-22 at least three times, once getting more than half-way, but never finished it. On the other hand, once I'm engaged, I have to simply give up on whatever else I have going on because I get totally enchanted by a good story.
Today I spent about 7 hours engulfed in The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, which I acquired at a book exchange at work. I started it a few days ago and today I gave in to the decadence of spending the whole day curled up on the couch, not even showering until I was through. Now I'm still stuck in a fog from the story and my inner monologue has taken on the voice of the narrator, as it usually does when I read fiction.
So much for InaDWriMo progress.
There was an interview with the author at the end of the volume. Apparently she used to be an academic specializing in French literature. I thought this question/answer was particularly interesting given how much time I spend reading blogs about balance:
You were an academic before becoming an author. What promoted the change in careers?
British universities are not very happy places for their staff currently, and I gave up academic life for the same reasons as many other do and would like to do. In particular the erosion of my private reading time made me unhappy -- if I cannot escape for an hour or two every day by reading for pleasure, then small problems seem to grow large, and I begin to feel enormously burdened. After five years in the profession I was plagued by the feeling that by some absurd mistake I was leading someone else's life, and was desperate to find a path back to my own. I had always wanted to be a writer, but was impeded by the belief that to be a writer one had to extraordinary, and I knew I wasn't. By the time I was ready to give up my academic career I had realized that while books are extraordinary, writers themselves are no more or less special than anyone else.
11 comments:
Very interesting!
It's true though...I choose (I have to constantly remind myself that I am *always* choosing to do or not do things...if I really want to do something, then I will find the time...) to spend my "free" (HA!) time on things other than reading (like bathing, eating, sleeping...). I literally cannot recall the last book of substance that I read.
How sad!
I don't seem to find time to read for pleasure, but I have noticed that a good audio book on my ipod will encourage me to go running more often. I get through a book or two a month this way, which helps me tremendously! (both the reading and the running).
Interesting... although I don't think anyone would be very happy with me if I decided to leave academia due to an "erosion of my private reading time".
I just went to the library and checked out some fun books to read. I like to escape by reading a book and I'm hoping that will help my current feelings of burnout.
Reading does help with burnout, and more than other forms of escapism for me. I think all those studies about horizontal eye movement helping with depression are correct. There is something to the back-and-forth motion that, even if you're not consciously trying to speed-read, does something good for your brain.
And yes, I'd like to think my blog is extraordinary even if I end up being just another unemployed postdoc. =D
A good novel can pull me out of a nasty funk...but not without first sucking up hours of productivity...then again I'm not very productive while funktified anyway, so it doesn't make much difference in the end.
Currently on my bedside table: The Children's Hospital by Chris Adrian. Mmmmmmmm. :)
What did you think of the book? I thought it was sooooo good ... until the end, which for me was a total cop out. Hmmm... how do we even have this conversation without ruining it for everyone else? :)
Ruchi, I liked The Thirteenth Tale almost as much as I disliked Lean Mean Thirteen by Janet Evanovich. Which means I liked it a whole lot.
As for the ending, I thought the big twist worked quit well but wasn't totally unexpected. I thought the other wrap-up stuff regarding the narrator was a rather contrived and somewhat rushed, but I'm a sucker for endings that tie up loose ends. Hmm, I hope that doesn't give away too much.
Can you recommend other novels? I like contemporary fiction if it's good, but I'm always too worried I'll end up with crap like the Evanovich book to buy anything. I usually end up waiting for my mom to pass on her favorite book club books.
I just thought the narrator's obsession with he um ... blank (anyone going to crack my code) even though she had never known the blank was a little much. But these are minor quibbles, really. I mean I loved the book. I just think I left it a little disappointed.
What books can I recommend to you?
This one isn't new, but if you haven't read Life of Pi yet, I highly recommend it. A few other books that came out early 2000s I highly recommend: Middlesex, Bel Canto, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
I'm totally blanking on books I've read recently but I'll keep thinking.
I love to read - and I agree that the teaching semester erodes my reading time. A colleague and I have a sort of scale for how bad things have got: during the 'vacations' we both read pretty much everything, including 'literary' books and big fat non-fiction things, even academic books outside our own fields. At the easy points of the semester we mostly read light fiction - science fiction, detective novels, thrillers(him)/romances(me)/horror(him)/fantasy(me). At the tough points reading new books of any kind becomes too much extra brain-load, so we tend to reread our old friends - we got chatting about this because we discovered by chance that we were both rereading the same science fiction series and were on the same book (he quoted from it in a tea room chat...)
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