The Reading Life, Without Books
January 12, 2020

     I don‛t read much these days, at least not in the traditional sense of sitting down with a physical book for significant stretches of time and reading with my eyes.  The thought of having that kind of uninterrupted time now, with small children, small livestock, and a small-town law practice is pretty comical.  The day may come when I have that kind of time again – but I rather doubt it.  And in any case, I can‛t wait around for that.  There are far too many books I need to read.  And the clock is ticking.

     Not long after I gave birth to Emma, my oldest, I subscribed to Audible.com.  Arguably, that's the best $15.00 per month I‛ve ever spent – and one of the reasons I am grateful for modern technology.  (Potential future essay topic: ‟Why I am not a Luddite‟.)  Turns out, breastfeeding lends itself nicely to reading by listening – as do many other activities.  I now ‟read‟ while feeding the chickens, walking the dogs, washing my face, and making the beds.  I try to maintain a balanced reading diet, rotating among history & biography, classic fiction (the literary ‟canon,‟ broadly defined), science, new fiction (tracking close to Pulitzer and National Book award finalist lists), political & social science (including economics), and some business / self-improvement titles.  A notable exception: so far, most of my farming books are in hard copy.  I can read them in short spurts over a bowl of cereal – though not with great consistency.  Overall, I average about two or three books a month, depending on the length of a given book.  This is not a lot by some people‛s standards, but it‛s better than nothing.  Twenty-five or thirty books a year adds up to a fair amount of books.  Not bad for someone who doesn‛t have time to read.

     This count includes a number of books that I re-read.  Last year, I got to the end of Admiral William McRaven‛s motivational book Make Your Bed and immediately dialed right back to the beginning and listened again.  I likewise listened to A Room of One‛s Own, by Virginia Woolf, three times in a row last year.  I had read that one in college, but felt the need to revisit it in my current phase of life.  I will be revisiting it yet again.

     So far, there is only one book that I re-read annually,  as a quasi-religious rite: Annie Dillard‛s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.  I started it again yesterday.  More on that tomorrow.