Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Two-timing, soon to be quadruple-timing

I posted a few days back about the giant mound of unread books in my posession. I decided, after The Partly Cloudy Patriot, to tackle a book that's been shaming me for over three years now. College students know what I mean. You get assigned this great book, during the absolute worst week of the semester. You have choices to make. Even when you decide to forego personal hygiene, household cleanliness, and sleep, something always happens to fuck you over. You don't get it all done. You leave the book unread, you go to the class, and everyone's talking about how great it was. You vow to read it now that you have more time and you're through the worst of it. Except now, all you want to do is sleep.

I crashed so hard at the end of that semester that I found Simpsons re-runs too intellectual for weeks afterward. Then the next semester started. So I never read John Demos' classic study of Plymouth Colony, A Little Commonwealth. It sat there taunting me ever since: "You claim you're interested in this stuff, Library Diva, you pretend you care enough to make it your life's work, and here I sit, all 176 pages of me, and you haven't even picked me up since you put me on this fancy shelf!" So I started it, to stop the taunting once and for all.

Except, I still had the heavy lifting problem. Especially last night. I was just tired and wanted to have fun and it was 1AM, and I just couldn't read about the types of furnishings found in early homes (that's the part I'm at). So I started the most fun-looking book in my stack, Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani.

Coincidentally, I had a job interview today for the position of curator at the home of a Famous American Woman Writer (FAWW). It went well, and they've invited me to do an on-site interview next week. I have never read any of FAWW's work, and want to make sure I don't despise it, preferably before the interview, so I will be reading (or at least starting) her best-known work this weekend.

Finally, someone is writing a novel set at the museum where I work now. She's been in touch with me many times over the past six months, and told me today that apparently there already was a novel based on events that happened there. She asked if I'd take a look at it for her, since she's worried that it might unconsciously influence her own work. I really like this woman. I like her premise, and frankly, I feel as though she has a shot at succeeding where I've failed in bringing the history to life. So I'm going to do it. So I'll have four books going at once. If my reviews are a little strange over the next week, you will know why!

1 comment:

Matt said...

Four books at once, I've done that before. The challenge is forcing myself not to concentrate on one only, but to keep going through al of them.

A few times I've read two books at a time (usually different genres) and switched books after each chapter.