Recent Reads

I stopped reading. I wrote about it during the week. I mean, I CAN read – I haven’t forgotten my letters. I just haven’t been losing myself in pages… And I haven’t been casually picking up books, starting them, and finishing them. It’s been years.

So I tried just picking up books and diving in. It’s not like riding a bike. I would put the book down, and not return to it. That didn’t work.

My next strategy has been to open up a few books, and bounce between them. It’s not very efficient, but it seems to be working. Simultaneously, I have been opening up my magazines (The New Yorker, The Economist, and Scientific American) and working through articles here and there.

Some readers (ha ha!) were horrified by this strategy, and offered alternatives – as if what I am doing is wrong and must not be working. Nancy sent me to this adorable self-help “become a reader again since you were before” video. Others had suggestions for books to get me back in the habit, or specific magazines. But no, I must not have made it clear – my strategy is, slowly, working. I am finishing books.

Finished

Mind you, my progress is slow. But before, my progress was “no.” So, four titles that I have finished:

• Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine, by Jack Lustig.
• Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of World War II, by Svetlana Alexievich.

• Draft No. 4, by John McPhee.
• The History of Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction, by Jacqueline Stedall.

I have this strange, hopeful feeling that I’ve forgotten something. But I don’t think so. And even if this is only four titles, that’s four. In a couple of months. And picking up steam. I don’ think I read four books in all of 2021. And, yes, they are all non-fiction. But I would offer that they are quite a variety of non-fiction

And these have been worthwhile. I think I will come back and say something about Stedall, maybe something about each one of these. And by the time I have four posts, one for each of these, I bet I will have a few more completed books to write about.