Eric Schmidt > Recent Status Updates

Not my favorite Thomas Hardy so far - but there's a richness of personalities here (at least the male centerpieces of the novel) that is extremely useful for conceptualizing political conflict. And for grasping that political conflict and personal conflict are sometimes indistinguishable. Not saying Trump is Michael Herchard, but he's damn close - and that means his supporters are damn closer....

I would like the record to show, sometime in the distant future, that I was crazy enough to try to read "Absalom, Absalom!" as I began drafting my dissertation.

But seriously, this book is fast becoming one of the most intellectually demanding reads I've ever undertaken. And the book matters. I have Faulkner's Nobel Prize acceptance speech taped outside my office door. We need him now.

Let's do this.

Meditation for today: I've always been a slow reader. I learned to read at 2 years old - but the price there is that I subvocalize basically everything. Is that a curse? Maybe not. I know for a fact that I'm a better writer because I'm forced to stop to appreciate the cadences of sentences. And, new discovery: if you like what you're reading, you won't give a damn about how fast or slow you read.

Reading goal for 2018 is 25 books. That's not counting the deluge of academic stuff or news consumption. But it's lower than others. Mostly, I think I've never quite figured out how to have a really consistent reading life. It's dominated largely by guilt about all the stuff I haven't read - something that is absolutely fatal for having a healthy relationship with books. Let's see...

Thought for the day: if reading great fiction and illuminating nonfiction crowds out time for the daily newspaper, so be it. There are far more edifying strategies for learning about the world.

Let's put it this way. When it's 11:00pm and *I'm* still awake reading -- let's just say this is well on its way to being one of my top sci-fi ever. KSR is a genius.