proximoception (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
proximoception) wrote2010-12-24 02:20 am
proximoception) wrote2010-12-24 02:20 am
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Just now coming to myself, really - my wife's still knocked down. Haven't had for-real flu, as compared to the traditional cold plus fever, in quite a while. That is some nasty stuff. Had no idea who I was or what was happening most of the last two nights, and have barely been able to move all day for kidney pain. And those are just the undisgusting components.
Had an idea during a lucid spell about a reading plan for next year, since this year's arguably worked. Well, everything arguably anythinged - what a useless word. Anyway, why not take myself seriously about these c. 12 authors I claim are best, not prettiest or most consistent but best grasp for some moments the things needful, and just read them? Cutting Borges and Calvino, since I read pretty near every word of both so recently, leaving Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Proust, Wordsworth, Shelley, Whitman, Dickinson, Emerson, Kafka, Stevens. And adding Crowley, who I need to reread, and Abe, who I want to read something else by - and maybe learn if I'm deranged to put Woman in the Dunes up with Kafka.
I read bits of most of them this last year, but it's high time I went back to Proust and Tolstoy - been like ten years. And it fits that plan to go through Emerson, Dickinson and Kafka chronologically. And if I need novelty there's some undergrowth works I've never gotten to (the unspellable Jean Santeuil, Four Freedoms, probably lots of Leaves of Grass sections) or through (The Excursion, the prized Resurrection, I think Necessary Angel). As well as tons of weird Abe, presumably. If by Autumn I'm down to late moralistic prose by Tolstoy, so be it.
Actually I'd probably need an 'out' for something as austere as twelve writers. Maybe for every ten or five books by these people I get to pick some other one. A sanity clause, apologies to Kelly. Ever try to set yourself that kind of incentive goal, e.g. a minute of cleaning for every minute of television?
Or renew it after six months. Or three. Or never really take it seriously. Or end up reading just magazines.
Probably more important things I should be resolving. Like to not use the word 'arguably'- hey, maybe no qualifiers period. And no generalizations or over-broadening imagery. I am a serial abuser of 'world' for example. Does 'for example' count as a qualifier by diffusion?
I'd thought of more extroverted reading schemes too, like reading only female writers for a year, or non-Western, or non-fictional prose, or pre-1500 literature, or books only by people I've never read - all comparatively weak points of mine, though the last less shamefully since it's by logical necessity.
But the intensive scheme meets immediate personal needs, and sounds kind of fascinating from this end. With the out included.
Had an idea during a lucid spell about a reading plan for next year, since this year's arguably worked. Well, everything arguably anythinged - what a useless word. Anyway, why not take myself seriously about these c. 12 authors I claim are best, not prettiest or most consistent but best grasp for some moments the things needful, and just read them? Cutting Borges and Calvino, since I read pretty near every word of both so recently, leaving Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Proust, Wordsworth, Shelley, Whitman, Dickinson, Emerson, Kafka, Stevens. And adding Crowley, who I need to reread, and Abe, who I want to read something else by - and maybe learn if I'm deranged to put Woman in the Dunes up with Kafka.
I read bits of most of them this last year, but it's high time I went back to Proust and Tolstoy - been like ten years. And it fits that plan to go through Emerson, Dickinson and Kafka chronologically. And if I need novelty there's some undergrowth works I've never gotten to (the unspellable Jean Santeuil, Four Freedoms, probably lots of Leaves of Grass sections) or through (The Excursion, the prized Resurrection, I think Necessary Angel). As well as tons of weird Abe, presumably. If by Autumn I'm down to late moralistic prose by Tolstoy, so be it.
Actually I'd probably need an 'out' for something as austere as twelve writers. Maybe for every ten or five books by these people I get to pick some other one. A sanity clause, apologies to Kelly. Ever try to set yourself that kind of incentive goal, e.g. a minute of cleaning for every minute of television?
Or renew it after six months. Or three. Or never really take it seriously. Or end up reading just magazines.
Probably more important things I should be resolving. Like to not use the word 'arguably'- hey, maybe no qualifiers period. And no generalizations or over-broadening imagery. I am a serial abuser of 'world' for example. Does 'for example' count as a qualifier by diffusion?
I'd thought of more extroverted reading schemes too, like reading only female writers for a year, or non-Western, or non-fictional prose, or pre-1500 literature, or books only by people I've never read - all comparatively weak points of mine, though the last less shamefully since it's by logical necessity.
But the intensive scheme meets immediate personal needs, and sounds kind of fascinating from this end. With the out included.