On the Night Shift

I'm going through one of those lovely insomniac phases where I'm averaging 2-3 hours sleep a night. Fun!

The up side is I'm getting a lot of reading and movie watching done. The bad news is that I'm exhausted. But this too shall pass.

I don't know about you, but there's a hole list of books that I think I've read, but I haven't. Classics, mostly. So I have this rule of reading my way through the list, a few books each year. My latest is The House of the Seven Gables, which I thought I read in high school but after looking at it I realized was completely unfamiliar to me.

I read a lot and I always have. And I love reading the classics, though it's not always an "enjoyable" process. I cannot say that I've had fun getting through some of Dickens, let's say. A marvelous writer and I'm glad to have read him, but I have to admit that getting through The Old Curiousity Shop wasn't filled with unending joy. And I'm finding "Seven Gables" to be like that. When I'm done I'll feel a sort of modest pride that I've read another must-read. But at the moment I do find it hard going at times.

OK, I'm a Philistine. I like Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, Elizabeth Peters and Tony Hillerman. True, I also love Jane Austen, the Brontes, and most of Dickens; Mark Twain and the Dumas (pere and fils). But I am, at heart, someone who loves enjoyable books. Give me "a thumping good read" and I'm happy. Which means I mostly read for pleasure. But occasionally I read because I should. Because I want to know that I've actually made it all the way through Crime and Punishment. (Which, by the way, I never will because my goal to read all the classics does not apply to dreary Russian novels that are 600 pages long and full of peasants and potatoes.)