No one reads anything I write
The cat always hangs out beside me at night when I'm futzing around.
I want to read another novel by Haruki Murakami. I read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle a couple months ago, and it was just a great book. Oversimplifying the story more than a bit -- it's about a guy whose cat runs away, and his wife takes off because she thinks he's lazy, and he goes looking for the cat and climbs down a dry well and achieves a weirdly chaotic inner peace. That sounds contradictory, but that's what it is. The book is (as my friend Tom said it -- more or less) something of a supremely cool mindf**k. So I want to read another by him.
But, see, there's the little problem that I have like five bookshelves full of books that are in various stages of being read -- from not at all, to barely started, to almost done, to--yes--finished. And I can't necessarily recall which is which. Well, I suppose I could figure it out. But the point is, Maybe I need to read the 100 books I haven't started reading yet, and I need to finish the 25 books I haven't finished.
Hey, that's better than when I was--oh--twenty or so. Those two numbers would have been reversed. Or maybe it just means that I have had more time to accrue a bigger backlog of unstarted.
I talked to my folks tonight, and filled them in on current news, which they were thrilled about, and about my idea that maybe I have or have had AD(H)D or something of the sort. I might not pass the DSM test for it currently--I don't know (though maybe I should find out)--but after reading a bit about it (I started with this wikipedia page about ADHD, and this wikipedia page about Adult attention deficit disorder (AADD), I ended up reading something like 100 different pages that talk about different aspects of it, and different related syndromes. I can recognize some of these traits on both my mother and my father, I think.
My working theory as to why (if my self-diagnosis is true) I have gotten "better" over the past ten years, is that roughly ten years ago, I started my religious habit of drinking a HUGE cup of espresso coffee every morning without fail, because it tastes great, and because it makes me feel good. That and just a general decision to get my life together and stop lying around (literally and figuratively).
I never tasted coffee until I was 23--I couldn't stand the smell of the stuff. But on my semester abroad in the Soviet Union in 1986, it was best of the awful alternatives for beverages in the grubby Moscow cafeterias I ate in.
I tried to find a good description of the most ubiquitous beverage in Moscow cafeterias, kompot. The recipe is basically water and a load of sugar, with a couple pieces of disgusting rotten fruit lying on the bottom of the glass. Anyway, this was the beverage that drove me to coffee in desperation. You need something to wash your greasy pelmenyi down.
So gradually over the subsequent decade, I began drinking coffee more and more regularly, and then stronger and stronger (but generally only one cup in the morning, and otherwise, occasionally another in the evening hanging out with friends somewhere, if it's not a beer-drinking friend).
This is my theory, for the time being, until I find out more.
While looking for the link above about kompot I found this page about living in Russia as a stupid foreigner in 1993/94. I was there 8 years earlier, and then again in about 1995 (but only for a few days the second time).
So Michelle will probably buy me a Murakami book for Christmas, which I will read and love--two years from now. Or I will read it now, and feel bad about not reading the books I already have. Or I will read another book now and wish I were reading a Murakami book. Or I will read another book and forget about the Murakami book totally for two years, until Tom mentions it, and I will say something like, "Hmmmm, I think I may have a copy of that book...or is it another by him...or is it some other book with a similar title?", and I'll go home and look and discover it and read it and love it. Etcetera.
Maybe I should give away a frozen turkey to a lucky person who reads this. Tickets are free. Both of you have an equal chance of winning. Act before midnight tonight. No purchase required.
Michelle and I got out of the house together to see the new Harry Potter movie, which was really good. I haven't read the book. Michelle noticed some things missing that ought to have been in the film. I have never read further than book #2, even though I really loved book #1. See above re: books sitting on the shelf unread.
I want to read another novel by Haruki Murakami. I read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle a couple months ago, and it was just a great book. Oversimplifying the story more than a bit -- it's about a guy whose cat runs away, and his wife takes off because she thinks he's lazy, and he goes looking for the cat and climbs down a dry well and achieves a weirdly chaotic inner peace. That sounds contradictory, but that's what it is. The book is (as my friend Tom said it -- more or less) something of a supremely cool mindf**k. So I want to read another by him.
But, see, there's the little problem that I have like five bookshelves full of books that are in various stages of being read -- from not at all, to barely started, to almost done, to--yes--finished. And I can't necessarily recall which is which. Well, I suppose I could figure it out. But the point is, Maybe I need to read the 100 books I haven't started reading yet, and I need to finish the 25 books I haven't finished.
Hey, that's better than when I was--oh--twenty or so. Those two numbers would have been reversed. Or maybe it just means that I have had more time to accrue a bigger backlog of unstarted.
I talked to my folks tonight, and filled them in on current news, which they were thrilled about, and about my idea that maybe I have or have had AD(H)D or something of the sort. I might not pass the DSM test for it currently--I don't know (though maybe I should find out)--but after reading a bit about it (I started with this wikipedia page about ADHD, and this wikipedia page about Adult attention deficit disorder (AADD), I ended up reading something like 100 different pages that talk about different aspects of it, and different related syndromes. I can recognize some of these traits on both my mother and my father, I think.
My working theory as to why (if my self-diagnosis is true) I have gotten "better" over the past ten years, is that roughly ten years ago, I started my religious habit of drinking a HUGE cup of espresso coffee every morning without fail, because it tastes great, and because it makes me feel good. That and just a general decision to get my life together and stop lying around (literally and figuratively).
I never tasted coffee until I was 23--I couldn't stand the smell of the stuff. But on my semester abroad in the Soviet Union in 1986, it was best of the awful alternatives for beverages in the grubby Moscow cafeterias I ate in.
I tried to find a good description of the most ubiquitous beverage in Moscow cafeterias, kompot. The recipe is basically water and a load of sugar, with a couple pieces of disgusting rotten fruit lying on the bottom of the glass. Anyway, this was the beverage that drove me to coffee in desperation. You need something to wash your greasy pelmenyi down.
So gradually over the subsequent decade, I began drinking coffee more and more regularly, and then stronger and stronger (but generally only one cup in the morning, and otherwise, occasionally another in the evening hanging out with friends somewhere, if it's not a beer-drinking friend).
This is my theory, for the time being, until I find out more.
While looking for the link above about kompot I found this page about living in Russia as a stupid foreigner in 1993/94. I was there 8 years earlier, and then again in about 1995 (but only for a few days the second time).
So Michelle will probably buy me a Murakami book for Christmas, which I will read and love--two years from now. Or I will read it now, and feel bad about not reading the books I already have. Or I will read another book now and wish I were reading a Murakami book. Or I will read another book and forget about the Murakami book totally for two years, until Tom mentions it, and I will say something like, "Hmmmm, I think I may have a copy of that book...or is it another by him...or is it some other book with a similar title?", and I'll go home and look and discover it and read it and love it. Etcetera.
Maybe I should give away a frozen turkey to a lucky person who reads this. Tickets are free. Both of you have an equal chance of winning. Act before midnight tonight. No purchase required.
Michelle and I got out of the house together to see the new Harry Potter movie, which was really good. I haven't read the book. Michelle noticed some things missing that ought to have been in the film. I have never read further than book #2, even though I really loved book #1. See above re: books sitting on the shelf unread.
posted by John McGreivey at 1:47 AM
2 Comments:
I just thought I'd let you know I just read what wrote. ;-) And I can really relate. I have so many books that I have difficult time knwoing which ones have been read, thumbed through or started, but not finished, etc. Yes, I have ADHD;-)
Okay, so far you may be right. Maybe only two people read your blog.
I'm at the other end of the spectrum, in terms of books. I don't have a single book that I have not already read at least once. I don't have that many books, either. Some have been on 'permanent loans', some tossed, some sold, some donated. The rest are paperbacks no one wants that are still in a box somewhere in the basement, I think. It's shameful how little I read, I suppose. The kids have lots of books in their rooms, but otherwise we have two bookcases in our house, and the only things resembling books on them are photo albums.
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