Reader's Block

I promise I am done squicking everyone out for at least a few days.

Today's post (my 8th post!  One full week completed!!!) will be far more lo-key, thanks largely to the fact that I spent the entire morning cleaning my apartment for the arrival of my parents.  A couple of days ago, they got it into their head that they were going to take me and my sister out to lunch to celebrate our birthdays.  Collective.

Date of my sister's birthday:  July 9th

Date of my birthday:  September 18th

... Makes sense to me!

Anyway - so I spent a lovely Sunday with the family, first at the wonderful Skylark, and then eating longan in my apartment around my tiny coffee table as we discussed the pros and cons of organic farming and hydroponics.  It sounds a little dry, but trust me - it surely beats getting berated about the fact that we haven't produced heirs to the Lai family line, yet.

Of late, particularly looking at what I've produced this week, I am reminded that I am still pretty amateur when it comes to writing - mostly because I don't do a lot of it.  Writing is an art form to be practiced.  But where to start?  Almost everyone will tell you that, to be a good writer, you should first be a good reader.

This is a problem for me.  A huge one.  I don't read.  Well, at least, not as of late.  I read quite a bit when I was growing up, a real book worm.  Some of it was dessert, some of it was, I suppose, impressive for someone my age.  Hardy Boys.  The works of Shakespeare.  Herman Hesse.  The Redwall series.

After high school, though, I made a lot of excuses to not read - the number one, of course, being that my course load was too heavy for much pleasure reading.  Really, that's not true at all.  I goofed off a lot in school, opting to unload my brain on the Internet or television.  It was just so much easier to filter information in through my head via animation and live, moving visuals than text upon text upon text. And why not?  Shakespeare's works were plays - not novels.  The wit of his language was transmitted through both the sound and action.

I'm not justifying my lack of reading.  It's a really terrible thing, they way I treat books.  When I read, it was just too easy to get distracted and lost in thought, mid-sentence.   The author would make an off-hand comment about the color of someone's trousers, and I would think about whether the trousers were possibly cuffed or straight-legged, and then I would think about needing to hem the bottom of my own jeans, lest they start to fray before long...  Suddenly, I'd snap back, realizing that I had sort of gotten to the bottom of the page, but not actually read a single word, for thinking about the cost of pre-made dress patterns.

I made a resolution at the beginning of the year to try and read at least two books a month.  That... definitely did not happen.  This is a problem, because suddenly everyone and their uncle has been giving me book recommendations.  Even before that, though, I knew there was an inherent list of things that it was nigh heretical for me to not have read at an earlier age.

Anyway, since apparently the only way to keep myself honest and in check about stuff is to post it on the Internet, here is my ever-growing list of things that I needed to read yesterday (no particular order):

• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (all of them)
• The Lord of the Rings (all of them - I was particularly susceptible to mind wanderings when I tried reading this the first... five or so times... so I need to buckle down.)
• The Hobbit
• Twilight of the Superheroes (I picked it up for $2 because of the cover, read the first chapter, and never finished for some reason)
• The Thermodynamics of Pizza (a lovely anthology of essays) 
• The Architecture of Matter
• Life of Pi
• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian
• Callahan's Crosstime Saloon 
• Her  Royal Spyness (Dessert reading at best, but I've grown attached to the series' heroine)
• Cloud Atlas
• Ghost Planet (...Look, I bought it only to review it for Smart B****s, Trashy Books literary blog, but I missed the deadline, and now I feel the need to read it on principle because I freaking paid money for it)
• The remaining Shakespearean plays that I haven't gotten to yet.
• Some Lovecraftian stuff.

Reading is a really wonderful thing.  It opens your imagination and head in ways unexplainable, and I dearly miss having that experience.  I do expect for people to start recommending things (or maybe berating me for not having already ready some of the books on this list) after seeing this post.  Well.  Bring it on folks.  I may be selling September to BEDIS, but I have the rest of my life to read, and I see no reason to stop.

Until the next.