Unsuspecting reader (maybe even readers, since this post is in English), beware! This is definitely going to be “one of those posts”, a lot of rambling and no clear idea of where I’m going. When a piece starts like that in a reputable magazine, you know that the writer will have figured something pretty moving/ peculiar/ insightful/ funny about themselves by the end of the article; no such guarantee here, alas.

And… Now we’re back to “reader”. I guess that’s how disclaimers work.

I’m not exactly sure when I started this blog, but it must have been a little over a year ago. I hadn’t quite enrolled back to school then, but I was seriously thinking about it. My reading was all over the place (still is), and I wanted to give it some sort of direction (not a success so far — school has been much better at that). I also wanted to train myself to write a little more formally in English (not quite dissertations, but a step more complex than emails). I’m still very unhappy with what I write, especially relative to the amount of time I spend on notes, but that’s definitely getting better. Hopefully my grammar is improving too — if not, I find solace in the fact that I spend less and less time reviewing it, so if it’s stable I’m still improving my result-to-effort ratio.

The “all over the place-ness” has been on my mind a lot lately, especially since I appear to experience reader’s block. My reading patterns are the fruit of very eclectic tastes, low self-discipline, and of my work history. This last one might seem a tad strange, but it has sadly one of the key influences on my reading life. When I was working corporate, I had 10-hour workdays as a base, with frequent travels (between 20% and 60% of the work week, depending on phases — yes, that’s between one and three days a week in another city, with associated late nights working until it was time to go to bed). Work also trained me to shorten my attention span: it was part of my job to juggle projects, clients, vendors, methods, activities, etc. Literally was what I was paid for. Most of the reading I managed to do then was escapist. I still read quite a lot, and many good books too, but I let the fantasy/ science fiction/ horror part of my tastes take over, and pretty much take the place of everything else, except for the odd piece of “literary fiction” when I was on vacation. I had been reading way “beyond my age” as a child, teenager and young adult; I started reading way “below” as a sentient cog.

Now there’s nothing wrong with well-written fantasy, but I think there’s something off-balance about reading only one type of books. Not to mention the fact that after a while, you start reading pretty mediocre books compared to the ones you could be reading if you were just a little more open-minded. Not working full time any more, and then enrolling for a lit degree means that I have read better written books (overall) these past twelve months, and that I have been thinking about what I’m reading a lot more. That’s mostly a pleasure (which is why I fully intend on keeping this up!). But once in a while, it also is a challenge, and that seems to be where I’ve spent the past two weeks. I want to read something fun, light and fluffy, which is why I picked up Songs of Distant Earth while exploring a second-hand bookstore the other day. I had fun reading it, thought a couple ideas were interesting, and was pleasantly surprised by the writing (whoever translated the Clarke I read in French as a kid did a terrible job — everything came out as poorly written as Asimov, and the touches of irony got lost in translation). However, there is no way I can claim it was a good book: the plot holes and unexplored ideas, for one thing, could fill up the aforementioned galactic emptiness. Then I tried a Giono, and I was… over-analytical. I think I spoiled a perfectly good book for myself by looking it in the mouth. And the past four days, I’ve been playing a lot of Oblivion on the Xbox (and have a looong way to go to complete the game), reading tons of mindless Internet chatter about how to make my hair look good (next-to-impossible) and whether Dior’s Shanghai campaign is racist or not (of course it is). But I haven’t opened a book, and I feel like I’m never going to want to open one again. Which is frankly terrifying me, since it’s about time I started seriously preparing for the Master’s classes, which are starting in a month or two. Or three. Depending on how the French bureaucracy will feel in September/ October/ November/ etc.)

I’ve had a little more freelance work coming in lately, most of it in market research (my first career). I wonder if that’s activating an ADD button in my brain, or if I just need a break (from what?). Chris and I have a little traveling coming up at the end of the month. That always works well to reset my brain, so here’s to hoping, but really what I want is get to a magical point where the effort will disappear and reading will become just as automatic and inescapable as brushing my teeth. I might have to cut out some more clutter from my life, and I think I’m getting to a point where I can accept that — but I’m not quite there yet.