I am wanting to read voraciously lately, probably because I’ve been enjoying it so much. The three Jim Grimsley novels were outstanding. I’m going s-l-o-w-l-y though Mark Doty’s Dog Years in that way of wanting to appreciate it thoroughly. (And trying not to cringe. So many ways I am with my dogs would not meet with his approval.) Saturday, I managed to steal away for a few pages of Erica Jong, who had this timely wisdom to offer:
Perhaps the reading addiction cannot be suppressed. I hope not. We live in a world so full of willful distractions that it seems unlikely that pursuits as solitary as writing and reading can survive. In airports, gyms, banks, diners, manicure parlors, TV news assaults you. On the telephone, you are obliged to listen to music you would never choose. Cell-phone junkies (including me) tell you details of their dinners, dynastic complications and medical disorders you don’t want to know. All your senses scream for serenity.
Perhaps, paradoxically, that is why writing has never been so important–despite the fact that fewer and fewer people have time to read. Writing and reading enable you to reclaim the inside of your skull. They erase the slate scribbled with distractions. For me it is a kind of meditation. I am never so calm as after I have written. And the next morning I will feel the familiar anxiety and I will have to begin the process all over again.
(From Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life)
I usually read the same amount–what changes is how much in a given day is the percentage of what I read is new stuff and how much is old comfort reading. Part of the reason I read at night is that doing so relaxes me and helps me to fall to sleep. It helps to focus my mind and hence make me relax–to just turn out the light and lie there in the dark like many people are able to do would drive me nuts.
thanks for sharing that.