Reading while spaced
Nov. 1st, 2010 04:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
polutropeSchool started a while ago, I guess. And I guess it's been going fairly decently, though I'm not as into it this year as I have been. For one thing, it cuts into my reading time, and when I do read I'm really sleepy. I don't know about the rest of you, but I have very short patience when I'm sleepy. Not always in a snappy way: in fact, I am like a happy bear when I'm sleepy. What I have little patience for is media of any sort. I can only watch TV when I'm not tired, which is annoying, because otherwise it would be a great way of killing time. I can barely listen to music; only my very favorite songs can penetrate the fog surrounding my brain. And books. If I can even look at them, I get snappy with them more easily than I did over the summer, say*.
So now I am tired and really only read at meals** or when I have some spark of intelligence left in my sad brain (not often). I was reading A Pillar of Iron for three weeks or so. And it was ok, I guess. I might have been either more or less annoyed with it if I had read it in one or two sittings. It was about how Cicero was a perfect martyr whose only crime was loving his country too much and swerved from dull to awesome every few pages.
Then I started The Volcano Lover and was pretty annoyed by the style, and again I couldn't tell if I'd like it better when I was more alert or if it would grate on me in any mood. I made it about 15 pages. Now I'm 100-something pages into City of Saints and Madmen and well, it's not bad or anything. There's some pretty decent world-building, and the man can actually write decent English, though I have some quibbles with his chosen narrative voice. But really, the first story is about a man who falls in love with a mannequin in a store window. And didn't Hoffmann do that already, minus the slightly forced humor? The second is a history of the city, which is interesting, but in my current state at least, the humor grates on my nerves.
So I'm never entirely sure what's me and what's the sleep deprivation when I don't like something, for now.
--
*and even over the summer, I was harsher than I usually am. I had a lot of books to read; even if you read fast, it's not worth reading something you don't like at all.
**because I have no friends who aren't paper and ink, duh
So now I am tired and really only read at meals** or when I have some spark of intelligence left in my sad brain (not often). I was reading A Pillar of Iron for three weeks or so. And it was ok, I guess. I might have been either more or less annoyed with it if I had read it in one or two sittings. It was about how Cicero was a perfect martyr whose only crime was loving his country too much and swerved from dull to awesome every few pages.
Then I started The Volcano Lover and was pretty annoyed by the style, and again I couldn't tell if I'd like it better when I was more alert or if it would grate on me in any mood. I made it about 15 pages. Now I'm 100-something pages into City of Saints and Madmen and well, it's not bad or anything. There's some pretty decent world-building, and the man can actually write decent English, though I have some quibbles with his chosen narrative voice. But really, the first story is about a man who falls in love with a mannequin in a store window. And didn't Hoffmann do that already, minus the slightly forced humor? The second is a history of the city, which is interesting, but in my current state at least, the humor grates on my nerves.
So I'm never entirely sure what's me and what's the sleep deprivation when I don't like something, for now.
--
*and even over the summer, I was harsher than I usually am. I had a lot of books to read; even if you read fast, it's not worth reading something you don't like at all.
**because I have no friends who aren't paper and ink, duh
