Read a book sometime
Jan. 10th, 2025 04:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynRicardo Tubbs says my subject line to Sonny Crockett in a Miami Vice episode, and my friend and I have been saying it to each other for what, like, 40 years now? It's the perfect retort for when someone is shocked that you know some weird fact.
Anyway, I read a book! You guys are probably thinking so what, big deal, especially those of you who post every Wednesday what books you've read that week. But ever since I went freelance full time, and especially so since my freelance work became 95 percent fiction editing, I have not been able to read for pleasure. It's worse than a busman's holiday, it's just been a mostly joyless experience when I tried to read any books, even nonfiction, just because I cannot turn off the copyeditor and worse, I can't focus on something that isn't work. So much of what I read for work, too, is really terrible garbage writing, which has sapped the pleasure out of the whole experience.
To be honest, I think it first started when my sister died--I found myself really struggling to do anything that required concentration for longer than, say, the course of a magazine article. For a few years, I couldn't write, either, and mostly seemed able to only vid or do something short for Yuletide. My focus was shot. Then the freelance meant my focus was like a laser beam on my projects, which often came in at the same time and I'd find myself editing a bunch of magazine articles or proofing a 128-page issue, editing a huge travel guidebook, and editing a romance book, and I'd be sick with overwork and my hair would be falling out from stress. Freelance is like that, it's the feast or famine thing.
Anyway, a few years ago, I was taking a bit of a break and I read Song of Achilles and The Martian over the course of a couple months, but that was it. I never got back in the habit of being able to switch off work and read again, no matter how many books I bought through my Nook app or at Powell's or whatever. I kept thinking I would buy them, and that would make me feel like I had to read them, but it didn't work.
You just get so tired of fiction when you literally read it for a job. Especially because the really good authors are far and few between, and I'd find myself having the will to live sapped out of me by some of the unadulterated, pure shit I was seeing daily. I don't understand how some of these writers get contracts. It was especially noxious that it spilled over to nonfiction for me, because that was always a refuge when I would get tired of fiction in the past.
A lot of my clients have either stopped publishing, or found someone (usually cheaper) else, or just plain disappeared, and I haven't been in the mood since my diagnosis to chase after new work. I should, don't get me wrong, but I just don't care much these days. So I started thinking to myself, maybe I should give myself a nonfiction book to read, just as a treat. I'd watched John Oliver's episode of Hot Ones and he had so wildly, enthusiastically recced a book called Say Nothing, about the Troubles in Northern Ireland, that I went looking for it at the library, because I love him and I figured it'd be a safe bet to be good. I was like one thousandth in line but it eventually came up, right in time for the Hulu limited series of the story to show up.
And you guys, I finished it! I read a whole huge thousand-page book! (In my reading settings, anyway.) Well, about 350 of those pages were end notes, but still! I did it! And I'm now reading a fiction book I bought ages ago, The Golem and the Jinni, although that's definitely slower going and since I don't have a timeline, I'm reading less speedily. (That's my other issue--due to the nature of my work, I'm the slowest reader in the world. It's very hard to turn the dial up and remind myself I don't have to spot every punctuation detail.) Plus I still want to get back to the physical book I took to the Silent Book Group meeting, especially if I go to the meeting next month.
I know it probably seems silly to people who read all the time. I used to--my ex even commented on that, saying "you used to be a voracious reader" and it's true, especially when I was bus commuting to downtown Seattle, when I would read a book or two a week. But when I returned the ebook of Say Nothing, I felt so accomplished! Ridiculous too, but hey.
Anyway, I read a book! You guys are probably thinking so what, big deal, especially those of you who post every Wednesday what books you've read that week. But ever since I went freelance full time, and especially so since my freelance work became 95 percent fiction editing, I have not been able to read for pleasure. It's worse than a busman's holiday, it's just been a mostly joyless experience when I tried to read any books, even nonfiction, just because I cannot turn off the copyeditor and worse, I can't focus on something that isn't work. So much of what I read for work, too, is really terrible garbage writing, which has sapped the pleasure out of the whole experience.
To be honest, I think it first started when my sister died--I found myself really struggling to do anything that required concentration for longer than, say, the course of a magazine article. For a few years, I couldn't write, either, and mostly seemed able to only vid or do something short for Yuletide. My focus was shot. Then the freelance meant my focus was like a laser beam on my projects, which often came in at the same time and I'd find myself editing a bunch of magazine articles or proofing a 128-page issue, editing a huge travel guidebook, and editing a romance book, and I'd be sick with overwork and my hair would be falling out from stress. Freelance is like that, it's the feast or famine thing.
Anyway, a few years ago, I was taking a bit of a break and I read Song of Achilles and The Martian over the course of a couple months, but that was it. I never got back in the habit of being able to switch off work and read again, no matter how many books I bought through my Nook app or at Powell's or whatever. I kept thinking I would buy them, and that would make me feel like I had to read them, but it didn't work.
You just get so tired of fiction when you literally read it for a job. Especially because the really good authors are far and few between, and I'd find myself having the will to live sapped out of me by some of the unadulterated, pure shit I was seeing daily. I don't understand how some of these writers get contracts. It was especially noxious that it spilled over to nonfiction for me, because that was always a refuge when I would get tired of fiction in the past.
A lot of my clients have either stopped publishing, or found someone (usually cheaper) else, or just plain disappeared, and I haven't been in the mood since my diagnosis to chase after new work. I should, don't get me wrong, but I just don't care much these days. So I started thinking to myself, maybe I should give myself a nonfiction book to read, just as a treat. I'd watched John Oliver's episode of Hot Ones and he had so wildly, enthusiastically recced a book called Say Nothing, about the Troubles in Northern Ireland, that I went looking for it at the library, because I love him and I figured it'd be a safe bet to be good. I was like one thousandth in line but it eventually came up, right in time for the Hulu limited series of the story to show up.
And you guys, I finished it! I read a whole huge thousand-page book! (In my reading settings, anyway.) Well, about 350 of those pages were end notes, but still! I did it! And I'm now reading a fiction book I bought ages ago, The Golem and the Jinni, although that's definitely slower going and since I don't have a timeline, I'm reading less speedily. (That's my other issue--due to the nature of my work, I'm the slowest reader in the world. It's very hard to turn the dial up and remind myself I don't have to spot every punctuation detail.) Plus I still want to get back to the physical book I took to the Silent Book Group meeting, especially if I go to the meeting next month.
I know it probably seems silly to people who read all the time. I used to--my ex even commented on that, saying "you used to be a voracious reader" and it's true, especially when I was bus commuting to downtown Seattle, when I would read a book or two a week. But when I returned the ebook of Say Nothing, I felt so accomplished! Ridiculous too, but hey.
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Date: 2025-01-11 02:26 am (UTC)For the last several years I've been struggling to get through books as I don't seem to have the energy or the focus anymore. But I've been able to finish a few books and it's been such a great feeling.
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Date: 2025-01-11 02:50 am (UTC)So I say congratulations!
You make me realize what a luxury it is, for me to be able to drop a book for any reason or none. Whether it's bad, or I don't feel I have the time right now, or I'm just not feeling it, I can immediately stop. I can scoff or shrug, and if I want I can forget all about it. But when a book is work--or, when your brain keeps wanting to see any book through the ingrained work filter--you remain in harness.
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Date: 2025-01-13 12:13 am (UTC)I think that's also something that's helping me with getting back to my own reading--that knowledge that I can drop anything at any time. It's very powerful!
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Date: 2025-01-11 03:12 pm (UTC)It's been a while since I read The Golem and the Jinni but I remember quite enjoying it. There's been some good Yuletide and Purimgifts fic for it over the years, too.
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Date: 2025-01-11 03:48 pm (UTC)For many years, I wanted to break into fiction copyediting because I thought it would be more fun than the non-fiction that I did for work, but it never happened. Now you're making me feel grateful for that.
Regarding The Golem and the Jinni, I bought a copy when it was on sale, so it's on my TBR list. As are way too many other things, and they're all on hold because I got sucked into this fourteen-book (so far) series set in the world of Jane Austen only WITH DRAGONS! (I'm having trouble imagining the economics of such a world, but I keep reading it nevertheless. Currently on book number eight.)
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Date: 2025-01-11 08:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-11 08:35 pm (UTC)https://www.goodreads.com/series/191350-jane-austen-s-dragons
The first book is Pemberley: Mr. Darcy's Dragon, and they really do need to be read in order. It takes the first three books to complete the alternate version of Pride and Prejudice. Then book four is a prequel, and five and six are an alternate version of Persuasion. After that, we have many of the characters still, but the plot goes its own way. They're not great literature, but as fan fiction, they're keeping me reading.
They're all available in Kindle form for reasonable prices, or via Kindle Unlimited.
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