Reading: my shame exposed

Today, as I made another stab at organizing my office, I rounded up several books from the atop the computer and in cardboard boxes and two from a pillowcase (worst night's sleep ever). Then then I did a bad thing to a book-in-progress: I put them on bookshelves.

Putting unfinished books on a shelf is naked capitulation. On a shelf, it's camouflaged with all the other ostensibly read books, to be admired en masse, but not individually reconsidered.

Now that I track my book consumption on Goodreads, the proof is even more damning. I finish 5 or 6 books a year (not counting graphic novels). That's all. I stopped tracking in-process books on GR because they sit in stasis so long. But I purchase more books in a year than I read.

Today's most glaring surrender was New Ideas From Dead Economists. I received the book for Christmas two years ago. Every few months I would read the next chapter, having largely forgotten the contents of previous chapters. I've liked what I read, and now I even know what Malthusianism is, why it keeps coming up, and why people use it as a derogatory term. That's come in handy!

But the book ultimately failed to penetrate the atmosphere, and has now settled into far orbit on the shelf, where I'll probably only ever look at it again through a telescope.

This week, I started a strange new enterprise, reading The Tower of the Elephant by Robert E. Howard via Project Gutenberg. I've read very little so far, but I wonder how having a browser window open will fare compared to books piled up. I wonder.

Update: Finally started and finished in one sitting on Feb 3.

The secret to slowing down time

Sunday I was at a baby dedication pre-party. My friends, Brian and Jill, had twins a few months ago. Sunday night the twins were "dedicated" at church, which is a little ceremony some of us Protestants like to do, where parents dedicate their children to God, and the community promises to help raise them well.

I think it started as a desire to do something for families with more liturgical leanings, when the church's prevailing theology doesn't allow for baptizing or christening. New parents seem to want to do something religious with their baby.

That's all secondary to the story I was going to tell.

Sunday afternoon, before the dedication, Jill had a little to-do at her house. Because she likes to-do things. So do I. They're nice.

Several of us were discussing why we liked our 30s better than our 20s. Mainly the answer seemed to be because you were an adult, but no longer a flailing jackass.

Brian's father was standing near the conversation. The man claims to be 73, but looks much younger. He is normally laconic to the point of invisibility. Nonetheless, I turned and asked him, "Which decade did you like best?"

Maybe it was the babies, or the room full of young eager ears, but apparently I had asked him just the right question. He was suddenly full of words about his personal history, his time in the Air Force, and the decades of the 20th century.

He shared with me the secret of making time go slow. "You know how when you're in high school and you're counting the days until you get out? And in the service, you count the days? As soon as you stop counting, time flies by."

"So keep finding reasons to count the days?"

"That's right," he said.

I expected some homily about not counting down, about living in the present. Goes to show what I know.