Reading

tracking

(Author’s note: A shorter rough draft of this essay appeared at my personal blog two weeks ago)

A conversation with a good friend of mine about books, following conversations with other friends, and then the reactions of various new students I’m working with this year has revealed to me that maybe my reading habits are not the average rate of consumption that I initially thought.

I read a lot. Articles, the news, essays, books (fiction and nonfiction), correspondences (social media, emails, etc)…every day. On the whole I probably read a few thousand words a day just in casual browsing, so let’s just double that when you count casual personal reading, and triple it to include work (homework, essays, research, etc). It’s every day, sometimes all day. I reread, I read new things, short things, things I already know about but want to refresh myself on, and things I know nothing about. It’s habitual, I read with my morning coffee, on the train to work, at work, sometimes with dinner, and before bed.

This, I have come to realize, is highly irregular.

I’ve started keeping a more conscious track of what I read daily (or at the very least, weekly), in terms of both volume and variety. I’ve tried to take my cues from the daily intake patterns of other writers (Greg Rucka and Warren Ellis come to mind), letting my tastes sort of go all over, but until recently I never really actively thought about just how broad and odd it is.

My reading the past few days has been about Gene Kranz, some entertainment/media news about upcoming TV adaptations of books, a re-read of Tom Clancy’s RAINBOW SIX, a few Kurt Vonnegut essays, and a few chapters of TWILIGHT.

How the hell did I get here?

I really have no idea, especially when my kids (students) ask me. I just…I read a lot, and somehow, my daily routine of checking things means hitting up a wide range of stuff.

-Re-releases of old 50's-80's pulp novels.

-Political/scientific/entertainment news.

-Historical tidbits that lead to rabbit-holes of research.

-Short stories, usually fiction.

-Essays on everything from social justice to racial commentary to entertainment analysis to personal stories to critiques of technical literary theory.

-Comics.

Somehow, I read them all.Regularly.

Is this abnormal these days? From what I can tell, yes. I guess I was a stranger kid than I thought, buried in books and developing habits based around the consumption and processing of information. To me it’s so easy to read and learn, to read and enjoy, to read to broaden my experiences and knowledge base and see what my tastes might lead to.

Why isn’t it for everyone else?