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kernelslacker
kernelslacker
09 May 2008 @ 03:21 pm
On reading books.  
I'm almost ashamed to admit that last year, I think I only read (as in completely, cover to cover) 3 or 4 books. This year doesn't seem to be going much better either. I'm still slowly making my way through my first of the year. The problem isn't that I'm a slow reader. My problem is one of choice. I buy a book, start reading it, and when I'm halfway through, for whatever reason, I'll end up with another new book, and start reading that one, and the cycle repeats. I'm great at starting books, awful at finishing them. I think I must have started reading about 20-30 books last year alone. I seem to only really get through books when I'm traveling. The fact that I don't have a bookcase full of options with me confines me to one or two choices. This is the reason that devices like the kindle, (or any other e-book reader for that matter) are a really bad idea for me. When overwhelmed with choice, my indecision consumes me. (Seriously, you should see me fail at choosing a lunch option when in a new city surrounded by restaurants. Even the infamous google cafeteria was total overload for me. I think if I worked there, my indecision would actually lead to me starving to death before I made a lunch choice).

Last November, whilst in Portland,OR I picked up a copy of The soul of a new machine. It's a book I've been meaning to read for years, after countless recommendations from friends. Same old story though, I'm dragging my heels getting through it. It's not that it isn't an interesting book. It's really interesting to me how many parallels there are in the story to things that are happening/have happened at Red Hat.

I think I'm about halfway through it. 7 Months. Perhaps I need to travel more.
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Erinn[info]perligata on May 9th, 2008 07:51 pm (UTC)
I don't think you need to travel more: I think you need to watch less TV!

More seriously, I used to have the same problem. Couldn't finish a book to save my life. And even now, I still peck at books and generally take a while to finish them, but I founf that the main issue was that I was trying to read books I thought were boring.

In short, maybe you just need better books. I can recommend all manner of pretentious (and enjoyable) literature to get you going!
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kernelslacker[info]kernelslacker on May 9th, 2008 08:48 pm (UTC)
TV isn't the problem. (Though, the arrival of GTA4 has certainly meant the TV has seen more action this past week than it has the last month)

I don't actually watch that much TV. In fact, I think most of the time when it's on, it's as a background noise type thing rather than "I want to watch TV". I'm weird like that. I like my solitude, but I like that the sound of voices makes the place feel less.. empty?

I think there's currently only one TV show I watch regularly. Even my netflix feed is currently 'on hold', because I just haven't felt like watching movies etc in ages.

A bigger distraction is that damned internet. I frequently find I'm reading, and then suddenly my brain gets an NMI and I have to go send someone a mail, or fix a build, or hack on something, or ..
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evilidler[info]evilidler on May 9th, 2008 09:40 pm (UTC)
I haven't watched TV since the nineties, and get my passive entertainment through a digital premium channel (Azureus, Transmission). No schedule = time to read. I count comics, so I've read a few thousand pages of fiction just this year :)

Add a few books which arrive at work whenever they're released to Amazon, and it's amazing I get anything done at all! Last year was even less productive, though, with me watching all of X-Files continously for two weeks..

Hmm..only six episodes into Andromeda. I have all seasons. Maybe after Charlie Jade, Noir, Full Metal Alchemist, Battlestar Galactica and..and..aaaargh! Overload!

Then there's GTA4. I expect there to be a little online play tonight.
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Erinn[info]perligata on May 9th, 2008 10:24 pm (UTC)
Ah yes, the siren song of the intertubes. I know it well.

I had to make a concerted effort to get into books -- it was an exercise in extending my attention span, and I think it's worked out pretty well. Usually when I get distracted in the middle of reading, I just set the book down and lean back and either let myself be distracted to the end of the thought, or write down whatever it was that popped into my mind so that I can think about it later. More often than not, the impulsive "must do this NOW" is exaggerated by a fear that I'll forget what I meant to do if I don't do it immediately. I keep little notebooks scattered around my apartment for these moments of what I'll charitably describe as "inspiration".

Anyway, I had problems like these before, is what I'm saying, and eventually I just found it tiresome to have so few of my actions be deliberate. It felt gross to look back on the past year and think: god, what did I do with my time?
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Erinn[info]perligata on May 9th, 2008 10:29 pm (UTC)
And as an aside, one of the benefits I've enjoyed from reading more seriously is that I'm able to think a lot more clearly and articulate my thoughts better, both internally and externally. So I think "reading more" is a worthwhile endeavor for a bunch of reasons, most of which have nothing to do with the subject matter the books cover.
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[info]jefftrull on May 9th, 2008 09:30 pm (UTC)
may I suggest
Author Nick Hornby has the same problem as you and wrote amusingly about it in his book "The Polysyllabic Spree", which is basically a monthly diary with a list of the books he bought vs. read, and why, with entertaining digressions. Recommended.
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[info]jahrens on May 10th, 2008 12:02 am (UTC)
I only get about 2-4 books during the off-season, but conference season is coming up. I do 90% of my reading on trips. That may change with this new KVM.
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gravityboy[info]gravityboy on May 10th, 2008 12:05 am (UTC)
I have this problem too, although it's gotten much better over the past few years. One issue is that I was trying to read things that weren't interesting. I used to have time for that, but not any more.

Mainly though I wasn't putting aside the time to actually read a little every day. I started doing that (although I only actually read once every two or three days), mainly on my lunch break at work. Suddenly it's a lot easier to resist buying new books because I'm actively engaged in one at the moment. It also gives me a good excuse to step away from irc for a while. This also lets me get to bed at a normal hour.

I've also been using my amazon wishlist to keep a list of books to buy, which helps me put off the impulse buys that'll only stack up in the corner somewhere.

I still don't read nearly as much as I used to (I was an English minor in college) thanks to the internet and free software, but making a little time to read each night has helped make it less of a problem.
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Kyle McMartin[info]jkkm on May 10th, 2008 02:07 am (UTC)
eat more fibre
trust me. it helps with finding time for reading.
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Erinn[info]perligata on May 10th, 2008 04:44 am (UTC)
Re: eat more fibre
oh my god
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(Anonymous) on May 10th, 2008 11:45 pm (UTC)
I was a little creeped out reading SNM. Hmm, a company with one office in Raleigh, and one in a Massachusetts town starting with "West". Who could that be?
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kernelslacker[info]kernelslacker on May 10th, 2008 11:49 pm (UTC)
heh. It's even more surreal though. DG relocated a large part of their engineering from Westborough to Raleigh. RH went the other way :-)

There's a bunch of other "similar kinda but not really" things in there that have made me raise an eyebrow a few times too.
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thargol[info]thargol on May 11th, 2008 10:54 am (UTC)
It's a good book... but then again, I used to work at DG, so it was pretty much mandatory reading! Somewhat depressing in places, too, though, particularly as you realise that nothing's been learned in the last 25 years, and management ineptitude is just as widespread now as it was back then.

I'm generally reading a lot less than I used to. This is particularly acute as we head into summer, and I'm riding into work, rather than getting the tube, which loses me 2 hours of reading time a day...
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