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Reading Slothfully
I was told in elementary school that I only could read at half the speed for success in college. Oh well, one benefit of slow reading is you get to live with the characters a longer period of time. I read in a vain attempt to better understand people. At my other homes, I'm known as a spouse, pop, guy in the choir, physical chemist, computer/web dilettante and child-care provider. In theory, I'm a published author, if you consider stuff like Quenching Cross Sections for Electronic Energy Transfer Reactions Between Metastable Argon Atoms and Noble Gases and Small Molecules to count as publications. I've strewn dozens of such fascinating things to the winds.
Currently reading
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas
The Spirit of the Border
Ramona the Brave (Ramona, #3)
The Underground Man (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)
Delilah of the Snows
Mrs. Miniver
Betsy-Tacy Treasury (P.S.)
A Christmas Carol
The Way Some People Die
Envy of Angels
Native Son
I'm not sure I should get credit for this book. I only finished two of its three sections (about 60% of a 500+ page book) before the library seized it back. While it is a good book, it is a painful read. The book follows the life of a young black man in Chicago around 1940. Segregation and racism are in full force. The corrosive nature of racism not only destroys the thinking of the racists themselves, but also the thinking of racism's victims, i.e. people like Bigger Thomas, the protagonist. His skewed perceptions cause him to make a number of bad decisions. Basically reading this book is like reading about a looooong, sloooow train wreck. Just when you think things can't sink lower, they do. It's inexorable. Very depressing, and I'm not fully convinced that some 70 years later, we're not still dealing with many of the same skewed perceptions and behaviors.
