flight paths discussion

when I first became enamored of books, my plan was to read them all. I had no real method, but I thought the way to go was to start at the beginning and from there methodically go through the lot. This chronological idea was soon abandoned when I realized it was impossible.

By then I had been exposed to the current list of greats and must reads. I decided I would read all of Dickens, as there were a lot of his books in the library. I got through Great Expectations with little trouble, but Bleak House really got me down. Pickwick Papers was the last straw...I decided I had enough of Dickens. This was a major decision and even now I pick my next book carefully and will not abide by the majority opinion. I may need to revise my opinion, but I no longer think it is necessary to read a book just because of its reputation, or a weird sense of obligation.
So that approach was abandoned.
Still, I do have a strong tendency when I fall in love with a book, I want to read everything that author wrote. So, in 1974 when I finally penetrated the Waves and declared it the best book ever written, I read everything by Virginia Woolf, and then her biographies, her critics and her friends and and their novels and paintings,and even even her husbands diaries.
This led to Gertrude Stein and Somerset Maughm. So that was next reading plan, following threads and in clusters

After university, I devised a reading plan designating a topic of interest to each month. I followed this plan for twelve years and it served me well.
Occassionally I changed a topic, like when I made August my third month for science fiction.
Jan: stories of surivivors expanded to include accounts of those who aided them and stories of war
Feb: science fiction/fantasy
March:Arthurian legends
April:poetry
May: philosophy
June: theology
July: anthropology
August: science fiction/fantasy
September:science
October: psychology
November:science fiction/fantasy
December:spirituality

The most whimsical reading plan I devised occurred over perhaps a year. I was living in an attic suite with my library in one room and my bedroom in the other. By the bed was one shelf with my to be read books waiting for their turn. On a whim, I wrote a poem out of the titles.
It became a little project. The thrill I got out of then reading all 47 of the books whose titles made up the poem took me through a difficult year.

What a fascinating story of your reading journey!

Mine is far less methodical. For years, I just read whatever caught my eye at the library or bookstore, or what friends recommended. It's only recently that I've started planning what to read, mostly based around various challenges or lists. I've found this a bit restricting, though, and would like to get back to a bit of randomness.

Her Royal Orangeness wrote: "What a fascinating story of your reading journey!

Mine is far less methodical. For years, I just read whatever caught my eye at the library or bookstore, or what friends recommended. It's only rec..."

in my humble opinion, nothing is really random...
and everything is subject to revision, including my opinion. I set up a structure, and then each book leads to the next....I rely on intuition and little cues for the actual moment of choice.

At present I feel like I am being devoured by chaos theory.

I'm with Ice at the moment: chaos theory. Since joining GR I've been overwhelmed by choices. I'm also like Kinkajou: I've never been able to stick to a plan but I do get back to things. Like Kinkajou, that a reason my shelves are so packed. And it amazes me when I look at old to-read lists, how I get around to reading so many of them.
That being said, I still long to have a structure. That's one reason this group appealed to me. Maybe I'll find a plan or structure that works for me.

At least, I think I'll enjoy trying!

This group comes at the right moment and makes me think about bringing more structure and planning, particularly as I 'preach' this line at work.

Big thank you to M & HRO.
(and to all contributors so far)

I've really been feeling the lack of structure in my reading-by the feelings of being so overwhelmed I almost can't read-at least not anything serious. I'm constantly distracted by other books. So I'm looking for a structure that's loose enough to allow for spontaneity (since I won't stick to one that doesn't) but clear enough to provide me with a sense of accomplishment to help me while I'm reading the "bigger" books. I don't do so well with reading "x" pages a day before switching but do sometimes insist on at least a page or two. Slow rate of reading but better than none & with some books it works for me.

Nothing kills my appetite for a book more than a sense of obligation. Having a personal reading plan is just a framework that allows me to focus on building my knowledge base. I move freely within the structure I adopt for a given time with plenty of opportunity for choice. The key is that you are in charge, and evrything you pick to read is your choice, even when its recommended.
Slow reading is totally appropriate: the deeper the book, and the closer I am to the end, the slower I read. I always have at least one slow book that stays beside my bed, and one walk around book.

I can't read from obligation unless I'm in school. I seem to have made peace in some way with school reading & can even enjoy it but if I "tell" myself I'm gong to read or finish a book, it's like a death sentence.

Sigh...I aspire to have a reading plan or maybe just set "challenges" for myself so I can whittle down my TBR list. I do try to have a nonfiction, a classic, and one or two other fiction books going at the same time (I'm a mood reader).

I'm a mood reader but too often I can't figure out what my mood is. It's making it hard these days to focus! ("I'm not in the mood for this, I'm not in the mood for that, Oh maybe I'm in the....no, wait, I'm not in the mood for that" Grrr with myself already!)

OMG, I adore Psych-the series & the books. I'm feeling that way myself but don't really let myself enjoy it; it's June in teacherland, time of great stress & little fun & all I want to read is something that makes me laugh but then I'm like, But Noooo-you have to read 1-10,000 first & then you can...

Any other books you can recommend for laughworthy quality?

Thank you for the suggestions. I'm interested especially in Rotter's Club. I haven't read the Monk, although I devoutly followed Shalhoub's series. Somehow being a d*** can be more amusing on the small screen (a la Fawlty Towers).

But thanks for making some specific suggestions about which Monk-I'll try one of the ones you mentioned.

And don't worry-I wrote the note myself. And signed it. Only problem is I used invisible ink. But it works, it works. :)

Ice wrote: "This group comes at the right moment and makes me think about bringing more structure and planning'''''''

Synchronicity alerted me to this sentence in a rare book that came to my attention rather randomly today:

The mind that is willing to set to work without a plan of some sort is not intelligent...
p1 of the prolegomena to psychology for musicians.

well.


Percy C. Buck

Kinkajou wrote: "Any other books you can recommend for laughworthy quality?

Laughworthy will be the name then, of a shelf in our group library. As we are just getting started, we have the opportunity to structure it according to our needs.
We need to be able to laugh!

Island of the Sequined Love NunChristopher Moore

so its done and hope it works, Ive set up shelves in this groups for our recommendations and cautions.
the humour shelf is in fact called laughable.

thanks for your participation and suggestions

Think I'll also try IOTSLN: I'm feeling darkly funny myself.

You'll appreciate this (my daughter just laughed): I had my phone with its Kindle app going & my Kindle (with a different book) and was trying to juggle both.

Two eyes would be ok if they could work separately. You know, one eye per book. (I tried to make a character representation but failed-think that's a clue?)

Yeah-I can almost see what it would look like, but not quite.

But the 2 eyes won't work because (just one reason)I think I'd have to cut the corpus collusum or whatever it's called so the 2 brain hemisphere's could operate separately & you'd be left figuring out a new way for them to communicate when you wanted them to talk again.

I've clearly spent way too much time thinking about this! :}

I love it-corpus collusum, the song.

Yes, I've also watched too much CSI. And don't take my neuropsych knowledge too seriously-I've only read what seems relevant to autism.

Although the only career I seriously wish I could have followed or even thought about would be in neuroscience. Beyond fascinating.

Accidently I am finding I have a plan, add to my tbr pile then unless its a series I am reading as they come out, stock picking is random. For instance today my wife is going to the library so she has my list from which to choose. Whenever I go out (non food )shopping (possibly once a year) or on holiday I take my list just in case.

Ice wrote: "Accidently I am finding I have a plan, ...whenever I go out I take my list just in case."

This is wise. Unless you have a photographic memory, it is entirely possible to find the book you are about to shelve already there (happens especially with series). It just happened to me, because I hadnt kept my notebook up to date and crossed off a couple of books I've been watching out for for ages and acquired by serendipity....

Soon I hope to be able to get it together to get a printout of my GR tbr list becuse in fact my little notebook is now obsolete due to all the exciting new titles I've been accumulating from this site. I dont have a printer, so its always a bit of work.

The really interesting question that begins to form for me reading through this thread, what is the ultimate goal in all our reading? What are we looking to find in books? A few answers are supplied above, for information and for amusement are prominant ones.
To lose ourselves and to find ourselves, both. Sometimes at the same time.

My list is about the same weight as that Boxall book, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die.
Hard to carry around. I do have several sub-lists however to address that issue: to-be-read next & to-be-read soon, as well as a to-be-read-mystery. Even all of these put together are smaller than my tbr list.

I like your question & I like that I don't have an easy answer. It's especially pertinent now that I belong to GR & my ultimate goal appears to have morphed into reading as many pages-no, actually books as possible. Rereads don't count, they don't change my numbers unless I use a separate edition.

So I've been thinking, do I want this to be my goal?

And the answer is (to paraphrase Dr. Seuss) no I do not.

So what do I want? I have some ideas-to think better, understand people & relationships at a deeper level as well as technical goals, to understand sentence and plot structure more deeply, things like that.

But also to have a better understanding of our time. Not so much through history, or reportage. That's not my style. But the kind of prose we use, the type of experiments we make or don't make with language & narrative, the kind of stories we choose to tell-these are ways that show me what 21st century America is about. Or hints thereof.

I used to read only books from the past. I wasn't interested in contemporary. Now I feel contemporary gives me important, if sometimes frightening information that I need to have about what's happening in my world right now.

For example, I'm not that fond of vampire stories but what's the reason for their intense & (it seems to me) overlong popularity at the moment? What metaphor are people struggling to find or using it to express? What does it mean about us that the dead are more interesting than the live, what message do we want to force them to yield? Do we feel our blood has been drained from us?

Do our young really want in some sense to marry the dead?

And what this zombie stuff about?

Your question has pushed me to begin to articulate some thoughts about this so please forgive the inchoate nature of my ramblings.

It's just a start.

This is a great start for another couple of threads at least....

I am feeling constrained by my current plan as I am out of my bestest 2 genre's (fanatsy & science fiction). However 'The Giver' part of me says that I need to read them to leave them (donate them to the library).

My next two genre's are included (Historical fiction, murder/mystery) yet I feel that I may be reading almost out of a sense of duty. In particular having read The Bastard as borrowed from this particular library, and now having to buy the remaining 7, so that they can have the full series.

Looking forward to October and a little more freedom of choice.

Ulysses (name of my avatar for he past 25 years, based on the Greek rather than the Irish version)

I'm using someone else's plan...

Specifically, Fadiman's 'The New Lifetime Reading Plan" Most of you probably already know this book, but if not, the book gives short descriptions of canonical books (chronologically) beginning with 'The Epic of Gilgamesh' and ending with 'Things Fall Apart'. There is an appendix with an additional 100 20th century writers.

The way I'm using the book is I'm starting at the beginning and following the chronology as my baseline reading, then reading more recent works from the Fadiman book whenever they pop up on GR group reads. And sometimes I read books not from "TNLRP", (like The Count of Monte Cristo, for example) but still return back to my 'baseline', if you follow me...

The benefit I'm getting from this method is that I find I suddenly see many more connections between the ancient Greeks and modern novels than ever before. The canonical reading is giving me a foundation that 17th, 18th, and 19th century writers would have gained as part of their university study, and which was not a part of my own university studies.

An example: Creon's consequences in Sophocles' 'Antigone' are updated in the consequences visited upon Crown Prosecutor Villefort in Dumas' 'TCofMC'.

Cool, huh?

Kinkajou wrote: "Cool, huh?

Cool, indeed. A very thoughtful way of approaching literature. There are many people who poo-poo any kind of reading "list" considering them too confining, but as you showed, a list ..."

Thanks K!

Luckily, I have a few real-world constraints that are helping with the discipline. First, I live in rural France and there are no bookstores with English-language books to browse in, so no opportunity for impulse buys. Second, I'm on a tight budget, so each Amazon purchase has to be planned and purposeful. And third, I have almost no exposure to US media and book reviews, so again, less exposure to impulse buys based on marketing. And lastly, there is no community college for me to attend to study literature, so I'm teaching myself about the Greeks (and other stuff in the future) using the introductions in each book, Wikipedia for general info, and a variety of major universities' online resources for supplementary information.

Or more simply, my current circumstances are imposing an extra force of discipline on me! (or something like that...)

Jim wrote: "Kinkajou wrote: "Cool, huh?

Cool, indeed. A very thoughtful way of approaching literature...."

If I had known about this Fadimans outline, I would have perhaps adopted it, and adapted it as you explain.
As it happens,to me this approach is only natural,its only logical to start at the beginning. It is a shame that the NA education system gives us such a poor idea of history, which is pretty much reduced to snippets of when who did what.

My modifications to the chronological approach include the spiral, which is merely as you seem to be doing even more thoughtfully, thematically; I like to circle around a subject and time period.
for eg when reading about any topic, first a precis account, then if possible eye witnesses, then some historical fiction, then drlve into the art and philosophy of the day.

When its an author I very much admire,I used to exhaust all the possibilities, reading first the ouevre, then moving on to the works of the authors favorite authors and main influences, whilst persuing all the reviews, and the biographies and litirary criticism. Often, as in the case of Virginia Woolf, there are the diaries, and her husbands diaries, and her sisters art, and the Bloomsbury group and work of her friends.

Now I am using some discipline not to do that with authors anymore, not to gulp, to have some faith that I will get around to reading everything in all due time. Hence, no years reading say, all of de lillo one after the other, or driving myself crazy trying to track down Roberto Bolanyo.

Magdelanye wrote: "My modifications to the chronological approach include the spiral, which is merely as you seem to be doing even more thoughtfully, thematically; I like to circle around a subject and time period. for eg when reading about any topic, first a precis account, then if possible eye witnesses, then some historical fiction, then drlve into the art and philosophy of the day....."

Yes, I like the spiraling method too and have done similar things in the past. Fadiman's appendices include a bibliography for each title with related background material as well as a bibliography of more general materials related to time periods and genres. Fadiman is far from the last word on the canon, but his book is an excellent reference and has served me well.

The New Lifetime Reading Plan: The Classical Guide to World Literature, Revised and Expanded

I enjoy the Fadiman and I like to check against it but I don't really use it as a guide.

I too like to spiral around a book/time reading other books by the author, other authors from the same time and/or on the same topic, biographies and texts about the era, and so on.

But periodically-and this seems to be one of them although I'm too busy, sadly, to read much at the moment, at least anything of substance-I go into what I think of "panic" mode: the feeling that I have to read everything I hear about, that I'm never going to live long enough to even read all that I really should let alone want to let alone all those books that need at least one reread.

This is not a good position for me. It's like watching a swimmer flail and take in water. I pick up book after book, read a chapter or 2 or even a paragraph or 2 and then pick up another. I can look at hundreds of books over a few week period.

The positive side is that when I settle down and am more peaceful-and that, so far, always follows the panic stage-I have a wealth of choices that I have already tasted & some sense of. It's funny because my memory for "life"-especially work-stuff is getting worse but my reading memory stays pretty strong (well, ok, when I was young, I remembered chapters and chapters by heart without even trying and could mentally look up passages in my head-by page number! and I can no longer do that, but still). So after these uncomfortable chaotic periods (which can last months), I usually have a good, long productive reading period. I just hope that part of the cycle comes soon.

I have no idea how to hurry this part along or if it's connected to my external life or what. Often when my external life is somewhat chaotic or difficult, my reading focus increases.

Ellie wrote: "But periodically....I go into what I think of "panic" mode: the feeling that I have to read everything I hear about, that I'm never going to live long enough to even read all that I really should let alone want to let alone all those books that need at least one reread. ... I pick up book after book, read a chapter or 2 or even a paragraph or 2 and then pick up another... I can look at hundreds of books over a few week period..."

So I checked out your home page to see what you were reading that coudnt ho1d your attention in this chaotic period of your 1ife. Who is this coenson guy that you seem to 1ike? Did you finish? Maybe now is not the time to be reading grim.
Generay, when I hit a dry spe11 I usua11y have been reading too much of the same thing. What often works is to grab something I have been reserving for such an occassion, something by an author I trust, something huge and a engrossing, and just give mysef over to it.
You may have noticed, I sudden1y have 1ost my e11, I'm using 1 instead. This has never happened to me before.

I have noticed that the more chaotic my ife is, the more I need the anchor of a book.

Have I ever encouraged you to read Marisha Pess1? Do get it. And the book I am reading right now must forma11y recommend it to you/

I loved Special Topics in Calamity Physics.

You're right-I must settle on one book. Preferably not grim.

Coenson is an author who sent me his book & I promised to read.

you are too kind.

Thanks for the recommendation-will go to the library asap. They're a fascinating topic (to me, anyway).

The proof is in the eating, 5 books is too much for me along with the continual technical reading. Proving my gender I will go back to Parallel processing from an attempt at multi tasking.

Plans for 2013 - I know I can read about one book a week and would dearly like to get tbr less than 100, but that means adding less than 30 books in a year - the harder task.

Less than 100? I'd be thrilled to get under 1,000!

Just curious, but do any of you have actual stress/anxiety about your tbr shelf? I have over 450 books on my GR tbr shelf, but I never really think about it other than as a reminder for future purchases. What I do think about, and in a fairly relaxed way, is the 38 books (I just counted them) that are here on my real world bookshelves that I haven't read yet. It's actually kind of nice to have a small backlog in the real world so that I can fill in spare moments with a fresh book when the opportunity arises. If anything, I wouldn't mind adding a few more real books to my real shelves, really...

I keep mine targeted so it fails to achieve the high bar set by Ellie !

I have only 14 unread in the house.

Jim, I use my TBR shelf in the same way-the only stress I actually feel is occasionally the sensation that there are just too many books & I'm not fast/good/whatever enough to read them all.

The problem for me is, there are just too many books I hear about that I find interesting. So much ends up on my TBR shelf that I've even divided it into categories so if I'm "in the mood" for a particular genre, I can look at that TBR shelf for ideas.

However, I hardly ever am at a loss for what I want to read. And lately-since reading The Recognitions- I'm much more focused on one primary book and only reading one or two others so I really don't look at my TBR shelves.

On the other hand, putting a title on the TBR stops me from buying even more books than I already do-just listing the book gives me the feeling that I've taken some sort of step towards reading it.

I have only 7 books for the time I am away!
but there are often abandoned volumes in the hostels, so my grand tbr list will have to wait.
I had around 200 boxes of books to dust,vacuum,before putting into storage.

Oh Magdelanyr-that sounds scary! Of course, all of what you're doing sounds scary to me.

only seven books for seven months, yeah thats scary.
walking the camino de santiago? thats a bit difficult but it is also bliss.

Magdelanye wrote: "only seven books for seven months, yeah thats scary.
walking the camino de santiago? thats a bit difficult but it is also bliss."

Once you have a mailing address - yours or a friend's - we can send you care packages of books. I'm sure we all have plenty to share with you.

Am I right, fellow Flight Pathers?

Absolutely!

I am reassured! Also love passing them on as I finish

Ice-sorry for the long gap before responding-I can't believe 14! I would both love to have such a manageable number and hate it. So lonely for me not to have the excessive number that threatens to topple down upon me. I love the feeling of "too much" even while I complain & feel anxious about it.