Reading is hell

In between lurching from day to day as a hospital intern, raising a small child, and smothering my rage so as not to commit chargeable offences on this blog, I've not had time for much reading.  I used to get through a book every fortnight or so on average, even during med school when I probably should have been reading rather more about sick people than I actually did.

As a result I haven't updated the Bookshelf page of this blog for quite some time.  I'm sure that the more literary minded of you have been salivating at the thought of an update, and I'm equally sure that only one or two of you have ever actually noticed the Bookshelf page of this blog. 

Regardless of your level of interest, I'm going to bang on about reading for a bit, for a couple of reasons.  First, I'm sitting here in front of a computer on a cover shift with not much happening so far, so I've got the itchy fingers, and second, I've noticed some interesting trends in my reading.

Normally my reading tastes run to:

• literary fiction
• vintage sci-fi
• historical non-fiction
• scientific non-fiction

Now what I've noticed is that when my stress levels ramp up, the literary fiction is the first thing to go.  All that cortisol must shut down my frontal lobes.  After a while the scientific non-fiction goes too, followed soon after by the historical non-fiction as my brain withers and dies under the relentless assault of my unhinged amygdala.  All that's left is vintage sci-fi, and even that warps and mutates into a desire to read really awful genre fantasy.  Ugh.

But given long enough, even the bad genre fantasy goes away, and historical fiction rears its head again - but in a very specific way.  I get magnetically drawn to personal memoirs of people who've had really really traumatic experiences, mostly to do with getting shot at.

I think the protective mechanism at work here is an underlying desire to put my life in perspective.  Sure, I may have to attend multiple Code Blues in the middle of the night but at least I don't have to see the tortured corpse of my best friend as in Flags Of Our Fathers.  I may feel burdened by being called to assess yet another asymptomatic hypotension, but that's preferable to having to pretend to be dead while my pockets are looted by the enemy and bullets are fired into the heads of my injured comrades around me, as in We Were Soldiers Once, And Young.  And sometimes I rile at the selfishness and insensitivity of my seniors at work - but at least I'm not being systematically hunted down and exterminated by the State, as in The Pianist.

The good news is that phase of my life seems to be over.  I've recently been able to start reading scientific non-fiction again, with Oliver Sacks' Seeing Voices - a book about Deafness, Sign and language.  Prior to that I read Naval Warfare In The Age Of Sail and learned to distinguish a sloop from a brig.  Soon I might be able to crack open that Anna Funder book I've been sitting on since April.

Here's hoping!

Bookshelf

Whilst idly perusing my google analytics stats I noticed that I'd gotten a few hits on my "Bookshelf" page.  Which is sad because I've been too lazy to update it for at least six months. 

From time to time I get briefly excited about a new concept, such as writing book reviews in haiku form or as limericks.  But then apathy takes over again and nothing happens.  I did briefly consider starting up another blog just for such reviews, but reasoned that the likelihood of actually keeping it going once the novelty wears off is very slim.  As you may have noticed, new concepts are very exciting to me for about a fortnight.

For those who wonder, here's a short list to update you on some the books I've read since about Christmas.  You may notice that there are quite a few 5/5 ratings here - I was lucky and hit a real purple patch around March...

Currently reading:
Titus Groan - Mervyn Peake.  The Tolstoy of baroque fantasy.

Recently read:
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro.  Haunting and sinister chick-lit. 5/5
Dictionary of the Napoleonic Wars - David Chandler.  Can you really "read" a dictionary? 4/5
Rifles - Six Years With Wellington's Legendary Sharpshooters - Mark Urban.  Like a Napoleonic Peter FitzSimons. 3/5
Welcome To The Monkey House - Kurt Vonnegut.  Assertively off-kilter.  3/5
Blind - Matthew Farrer.  Confusingly creative non-genre genre sci-fi.  3/5
Open - Andre Agassi.  Inside the tennis racket.  5/5
How To Make Gravy - Paul Kelly.  This is what blogs should be.  5/5
Into Thin Air - John Krakauer.  Tragic personality clashes at altitude.  5/5
Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino.  Hallucinatory travelogue.  5/5
Brighton Rock - Graham Greene.  Queen's song is better.  2/5
The Book Of Sand + Shakespeare's Memory - Jorge Luis Borges.  Betrayed by elevated expectations.  3/5
The Gospel According To Jesus Christ - José Saramago.  A cynical epiphany.  3/5
The Happiest Refugee - Anh Do.  A dull comedian from a fascinating family.  2/5
Eisenhorn Trilogy - Dan Abnett. Batman in the 40K-verse.  4/5
Titanicus - Dan Abnett.  Kill! Crush! Destroy!  3/5

On frailty

As previously noted, I own many books.  Many books.  This has been made abundantly clear to me by removalists, friends, visitors, and even - in what must surely be an exemplar of the pot calling the kettle black - my own Aged Mother.  Nevertheless, when I hear about a discount book sale I go rushing headlong to buy more.

I do this even though it would actually be cheaper to buy books online from places like abebooks in the UK, especially with the Australian dollar as strong as it is.  But I don't buy books online because I am inept at the key step of figuring out what I want to actually acquire.  Hence bookshops.  It's great to walk in and be immersed in walls of books, a paperback prison that frees rather than constrains.  It's not until I look at ten shelves of books on ancient history that I suddenly realize that my life hitherto has been incomplete because I lack a comprehensive knowledge of the campaigns of Scipio Africanus.  That's the kind of insight that you just can't get online.

Little did I know that this is merely the tip of the iceberg.

Yesterday my Smaller Half, the Hatchling and I went to the big sale at Borders in the city, which is going into administration due to bogus management.  20-40% off everything in store.  We split up and agreed to meet back in half an hour.  I was super restrained and only got two books: some stories by Jorge Luis Borges (whose name I mention here primarily because I don't know how to pronounce it and hence will never be able to use verbally) and a book by Jon Krakauer called Into Thin Air, both of which I have been coveting for some time and merely needed a tiny knock such as a 20% discount to crystalize the purchasing impulse in my mind.

My Smaller Half failed to arrive at the designated rendezvous point so I went searching for her.  With a dark sense of foreboding I made my way to the only possible place she could be - the children's books section.  Forty five minutes later I was only able to crowbar her away from there by surreptitiously provoking the Hatchling into a tantrum and announcing that it really was time to leave.  We had to leave the store with me carrying the Hatchling and the pram piled high with new kids books.  In a stroke our book-buying tendencies have multiplied.

Mind you, we got some absolute crackers.  Several Richard Scarry books, an incredible pop-up book that I probably would have bought for myself anyway, a set of Beatrix Potter books, some cute little fairytale books, and more.  And more.  And more.

Buying kids books makes me feel simultaneously old and young.  I tend to buy the books that I remember from my own childhood.  Partly it's selfish nostalgia (literally "the pain of homecoming") but also partly the sincere belief that if I know I'll enjoy the books that I'll read to the Hatchling then I'm more likely to read to her.  Reading books such as "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" again takes me right back to my childhood, when I would flip the pages back and forth looking at how the holes in the fruit line up - amazing!  What makes me feel old is when I try to poke my fingers through those holes and they are now too large to fit.

Hopefully I don't have acromegaly.