books i'm reading this weekend in between grad work (not a literature student) and carer responsibility

I have not gained ground under my feet. This idea that "one day" I am going to have a zillion hours to relax and just read by candlelight.

Instead of waiting for the ideal life circumstances in which to read, I have made a few changes to how I have been approaching my reading.

november 2024

Changes I've made in my reading life this semester:

1. Lessening time I am spending watching BookTube. Rather than feeling like I'm inspired to read more, I just feel totally overwhelmed.
2. Not tracking my reading on Goodreads or online
3. Not worrying about finishing what I am reading on any kind of timetable
4. Mixing audio (rare and mainly re-reads), with physical books, and ebooks both on my tablets (ipad and kindle fire), and my paperwhite

amazing reads

The consequences of these changes

As a consequence of changing this, my focus is just on, "What am I reading?"... not, "What have I finished?" It's such a lovely thought, that I just don't even worry about how long it's taking me to get through certain books or re-reads, I am just enjoying it.

Right now I have a book on kindle for late at night to totally decompress. It's a women's fiction type of free novel on Prime; a few classics, some literary fiction, etc.  I will post about all of them this weekend. 

I deleted Goodreads after like 11 years because I seem to struggle with overwhelm when it comes to social media-esque things and I had so many friends on there all commenting on each book I read, and I couldn't manage it well. I transitioned over to Storygraph which was great, but my kindle didn't integrate with it, so it so it felt like yet another thing to do. 

I want to start a physical book journal like I used to keep, but honestly unless it can seamlessly flow with what I am already doing, I won't bother with it. I have to keep everything simple right now, or the overwhelm will choke me. 

Upcoming weekend reading theme

I am going to focus on prioritizing school work (a bit behind), and doing what I'm doing which is reading in bits when I have time in between all of this immense reading and writing. 

reading shirley by charlotte brontë and a few quotes

 

I love this cover 

This is the second time I'm reading Shirley by Charlotte Brontë. I have really been taking my time with this re-read. Not only is the moralizing a bit annoying during this re-read, it hits differently considering what's happening in the state of America and the world right now.

As a result, I am definitely going to finish it, and I am about 85% done. After this re-read I am going to hold off on reading the Brontës for a bit. I thought I was going to read Jane Eyre before the year ends, but I'll wait on that thought.

Here a few quotes from the novel to give you a bit of the gist of the vibe of the novel.

“I am anchored on a resolve you cannot shake. My heart, my conscience shall dispose of my hand -- they only. Know this at last.”

“Strange that grief should now almost choke me, because another human being's eye has failed to greet mine.”

“You had no right to be born; for you make no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some other person's strength.”

 “I'll borrow of imagination what reality will not give me.”

“A lover masculine so disappointed can speak and urge explanation, a lover feminine can say nothing; if she did, the result would be shame and anguish, inward remorse for self-treachery. Nature would brand such demonstration as a rebellion against her instincts, and would vindictively repay it afterwards by the thunderbolt of self-contempt smiting suddenly in secret.”

“Once I only saw her beauty, now I feel it.” 

I will continue on with Shirley and the other several novels that I am sandwiching between my carer responsibilities and my immense school work.  

poetry pause: happy the man:: john dryden (1631-1700)

 

source: stock photo

Happy the Man

Happy the man, and happy he alone,

He who can call today his own;

He who, secure within, can say, 

Tomorrow, do they worst, for I have

lived today.

John Dryden

poetry pause: sometimes:: mary oliver's devotions (in part)

source: stock photo

Sometimes (one stanza)

2.

Sometimes

melancholy leaves me breathless

Mary Oliver

i will read for peace of mind, oh america, you constant disappointment

After Pennsylvania flipped, I turned the tv off and haven't turned it on since then. 

Oh America, you constant disappointment. From the shores of Africa to the bayous of Louisiana, to the promised North- I've seen every facet of hate this country has to show. It showed it's true red, white, and blue this past Tuesday.

Reading has always been a solace. A safe place to grapple with the ancient meaning of existence and a shared consciousness with humanity. 

I'll use it to help heal my frustrated heart.

shine on

I wrote more and then I deleted it. I'm not sure who reads this and I won't pour my heart out here for entertainment. I don't really receive comments so this site is more of a book diary for me than a community of readers, so it doesn't make since to showcase my vulnerabiilty.

However, if like me you need some peace... you can find it in the great works of literature. 

It's fine. It's okay. Time is ticking.... 

poetry pause: now may every living thing:: anon.

 

source: stock photo

Now May Every Living Thing

Now may every living thing, young 

or old,

weak or strong, living near or far,

known or

unknown, living or departed or yet

unborn,

may every living thing be full of

bliss.

Anon.

returning to a spreadsheet for book organization

I had a wonderful trip to new york, and while I didn't visit any bookstores (no time), I had some of my favorite coffee and took a long, slow stroll through central park thinking about my life.

favorite cortado ever

I sometimes want to just scroll through my book titles and ponder which books to add to my currently reading list. I am all about current reads. NOT what I have just finished,  but what I am currently reading. With that in mind I am always rereading my favorites even if it is a super slow stroll through them again (hello Jane Eyre).

I have cycled through phases of using Goodreads to organize my reading, and I am kind of sick of it. I had a Goodreads account for about 12 years, and hundreds of followers on it, but I deleted it. I started to be bothered by the thing that doesn't seem to bother anyone else, and that is comments on my current reads.

"OMG, you will love the second half of the book!" ; "This ending will surprise you!" 

This wasn't on the fault of anyone. They weren't trying to spoil the book in any way, it's just the nature of seeing someone who loves a book engage with someone who is going to read it. It started to feel a lot like work and I already struggle with social media (something I am going to work on in 2025).

I do miss keeping an organized spreadsheet of my reading however and an analog journal of my current reads. I have a few ideas for how to reignite this and it includes a printer and a glue stick (more in a post soon).

People say the alternative is The Storygraph. I have tried it and I did enjoy the stats feature, but I am just realizing that I don't care that much about the stats. I reread so often that the stats start to feel like measurements that are quite useless for me personally. I doesn't matter to me how many pages I've read, in what format, in what genre, etc. This is a very individual thing for me. I want to be able to look at my own computer or notebook and review my books and remember how I felt when reading them.

time to delete goodreads for the second time

This could easily turn into a conversation about how much I loathe what Amazon has done to the book industry and how Goodreads is more of a way to study how people read than it is to help you organize your bookish life, but that's an obvious statement at this point. It's simply that I want to go back a time when I could reach on my bedside and "see" what I am working on, own my own thoughts, and not have to wait to log into a device to remember what books I'm reading.

It will take a long time to transfer (probably not that long) my books over to my google spreadsheet, and I will continue to work on this for quite some time. In a dream, I'll add the covers to my steady TBR in the spreadsheet and size them to fit, and take time to reorganize my kindle collections so that when I open my Kindle Fire I can see the pretty covers. 

Here are the sections I want to have in my spreadsheet:

1. Books I own physically
2. Digital books I own (that I don't also own physically)
3. List of books I haven't read
4. Sheet for Thomas Hardy
5. Sheet for Anita Brookner
6. Sheet for Dostoevsky
7. Sheet for Tolstoy
8. Sheet for Baldwin
9. Sheet for Morrison
10. Sheet for seasonal TBRs

That is just a starter. I am sure when I am organizing it, more will come to me. 

I am excited honestly. I have a new journal for reviews, a new journal for favorite quotes, and a stack at my bedside. Let the fun begin.

always dostoevsky + frustrated with amazon/kindle (feeling trapped)

I'm dreaming of days when all I have to do is sink down into classic literature and some literary fiction  while drinking cup after cup of pour overs all by candlelight.... 

Okay back to reality. Medical carer responsibilities and a heavy academic load have situated me in a position where selecting my books is taken up with extreme seriousness.

Sometimes I wish I could be the type of person who says, "Life is hard, just read light novels and relax." Well, what I've learned about myself is that I want to be that kind of person, but actually I'm not. I sink down deeper into intense literature when life is hard rather than swim at the surface.

I have been taking a slow, meandering read through Michael Katz's translation of The Brother Karamazov, with some chapters of David McDuff's translation. 

Why you make ask? It's because the McDuff is paperback (though a doorstopper) and the Katz is hardback. I don't want to get coffee on my hardback. I don't mind bending the crap out of the Penguin McDuff. I actually love both translations so I just make sure to stop on the chapter end.

source: read & co

Somehow my love for Dostoevsky just grows and grows. It is this way with me. I am constantly rereading my favorite authors and falling more and more in love with their works and with them. 

I sometimes have FOMO while watching BookTube and seeing people read currently published works and following all of the book prizes, but then I pick up Swann's Way, or Song of Solomon, or Austen and I'm like, "Ahhhh, THIS is home." 

I have a few hardbacks from the Booker Prize short list for 2024, yet I'm taking my sweet time with The Brothers and sinking down to re-re-re-read The Grand Inquisitor (proceed with caution it can seem a spoiler to read that link). 

Virginia Woolf (a kindred spirit of mine) said:

The novels of Dostoevsky are seething whirlpools, gyrating sandstorms, waterspouts which hiss and boil and suck us in. They are composed purely and wholly of the stuff of the soul. Against our wills we are drawn in, whirled round, blinded, suffocated, and at the same time filled with a giddy rapture. Outside of Shakespeare there is no more exciting reading.

I wanted to get my literary hands on Rubenstein's Virginia Woolf and the Russian point of view, but it is going for

Could you imagine???? 

Either way, I echo Woolf. Dostoevsky's works are the "stuff of the soul". He is deeply philosophical and I find myself reflecting on my life in intense and reflective ways. You learn more about who you are as a person when you read Dostoevsky.

Onto other things...

Now's a good time to remember how much I loathe feeling trapped in the Amazon universe

NOTHING good comes out of monopolies. It took him some time, but Bezos is now changing publishing and I know that I don't even fully own all of these kindle books I paid all of this money for.

I could care less WHO is setting the prices on these ebooks, this is beyond ridiculous to ask me to pay $14.99 for a 300 page ebook all while the physical book costs $11.99 with free shipping. This is foolishness.

I do download my classics from a few places for free, and will make a post about those. 

I had to remind myself that a lot of what I truly love reading on kindle is hundreds of years old and therefore can be accessed for free, and he can shove his prices/ebook deleting behavior up his prime spot. 

  

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.