my first ishiguro and cozy cheddar

 

stock photo

I can feel the cool crisp mornings transitioning us into Fall. I'm back at school and now I am focused on how to balance academic research (which stays on my mind all day as I get settled into the new course/cohort), and reading for fun (which I miss greatly).

Truth is that it has been a hard time for me to find a balance in wellness (which includes reading for me). I am still working slowing through TBK, and as usual Dostoevsky forces me to ponder philosophical things. I have begun The Remains of the day by Kazuo Ishiguro. It's my first novel by him, and I love everythinga bout it so far. 

I have so many novels that I want to read, but I have been reading academic texts all day and when it comes to reading at night, I am so exhausted, I want to just watch K-Dramas and write.

As I work my way through getting settled in my new graduate program, I will make sure to carve out time (unless it's time for papers) for reading at night between my duties and before bed. 

Tonight I am on schedule with my work (though of course with research it never feels like it), but I am going to finish this cozy mystery that I have been reading. It's light and so fun.

update: got bored. it's not you, it's me.

I've slowed down on buying books and am going to focus on reading what I have until the end of the year. 

how to balance my fiction reading alongside my academic reading schedule.

This is the question I have to ask myself when time becomes constrained. This is when exactly what I'm interested in reading and all of my favorite books become your current TBR.   

my party snacks

Now that I’ve started to settle into the readings, which required of me and my caregiving in my personal life, lots of books have been put aside. I did buy a few of the books that I seemed interested in from the booker long list 2024, but it doesn’t look like I’ll get to any of them before Booker season is over. Which I’m perfectly fine with.

My read of The Brothers Karamazov is taking much longer than I originally anticipated that it would, but of course that’s OK. Aside from being a reread, it’s just a novel that allows you to slowly move through it without ever really getting lost. 

I’ve decided to temper BookTube watching to eliminate feelings of FOMO into ensure that I’m focused on what most important to me in the season of my life. It’s great to go back and remember when I’ve read 12 fiction books a year and was proud of it. I’ve always been a reader, but for the past several decades on and off for long stretches of time I’ve been in academic programs or academic environments. 

My lived reality means that lots of my personal time is already taken up by caregiving tests. This means at the end of the day when I’ve been on the computer or reading research and literature for eight hours. The last thing I want to do is tax what’s left of my brain on 1500 page novels.

It will be interesting to see the evolution of my reading over the next couple of months.