Actually Finishing

So I usually have between one and three books on the go at one time, depending on my emotional and mental bandwidth, and the time of year.

Mostly I can juggle a fiction and non-fiction book either digitally or paper, reading the fiction during the day and the non-fiction in the evening. But over the past few months I’ve been able to start enjoying audiobooks again. I struggle with them over the darker months; SAD really hits my concentration during the day, ruling out listening at work, and with the darker evenings I need my concentration to be on my surroundings when walking the dog, and not whatever story I’m listening too.

At the minute, I’ve got three on the go right now:

1. What you are looking for is in the library by Michiko Aoyama
2. How To Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens
3. Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson

Da Vinci has been a bear on my list for about eight years. I got it after listening to the Steve Jobs biography by the same author, thinking I could get on a biography kick, which turned out to be a lie. It didn’t help that it was another 17 hour read after listening to the 25 hour Jobs biography, nor the fact that while Da Vinci is an interesting topic, Jobs is both more recent and more scandalous.

Yet there it sat in my Audible library, taunting me, goading me.

I’d finally got back into audiobooks while walking the dog this Summer, mostly Warhammer 40k novels, Ciaphas Cain in particular, but thought it might be worth giving another go. I’m a few hours in so far, and it’s okay but I’m hitting a familiar road block of wanting to take notes but being stuck at the pace I’m given. I’ve started using the built-in clips function; we’ll see how that goes.

How To Take Smart Notes has been on my radar for a while now. I’m about 40% through it already on my Kindle, and it’s a real ebb-and-flow kind of book; easy to get through in parts, and then it seems I’m reading pages upon pages of the same point for 20 minutes. Zettelkasten is a system I’ve been interested in for a while, but always struggle to implement, although I’m getting the impression that’s more because of a distinct lack of filter between me and my zettel, and less to do with the system.

What you are looking for is in the library though is probably the one I’m enjoying the most. This one’s from my wife’s Did Not Finish pile; an adventurous one for her, as she’s much more into Kate Morton and books that go back and forth in a time line. It’s definitely not her style of writing; very manner of fact and almost plain, as opposed to descriptive and compelling dialogue.

To me though, it’s a book you don’t have to think about at all while reading. There’s next to no mental load, no call for you to really stretch your imagination. It’s a collection of short stories around the same theme - person is unhappy with an aspect in their life, they go to a community library, and the Librarian recommends a bunch of books including something that’s totally left field but also unlocks their answer for them. It’s sweet, it’s simple, and it’s uplifting. Perfect after a long day, or in today’s case, when I’m full of a summer cold.

If I had to put money on it, I’d say I’d finish Smart Notes and Library this month pretty comfortably, and maybe get Da Vinci done just in time for my next credit to turn up. Then I’m turning right back to 40k. I’ve forgotten how much my brain needs sci-fi, and it feels like it could use a reward.

‘A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone, if it’s to keep its edge. That is why I read so much.’ - George R R Martin, Game of Thrones

Reading is one of the earliest hobbies I can remember. Our local library had a mobile van that would park at our local park every Thursday, and I would get through whatever I could.

I started with the usual kid’s books, following on to my early forays into comic books - Tintin, and Asterix and Obelix. At some point, the nice lady behind the desk suggested to my mum that I might want to give this new book series a go that had been getting quite popular, which is how I started reading Harry Potter.

I was hooked. Reading became a salvation, even back then when the most I had to worry about was school. Goosebumps, Animorphs, Darren Shan, wider and wider my net grew. It took a few years, though, before I found something else that captured my mind quite as much as Potter. That was at a random books fair at school when I was about 13 or 14, where I found The Fifth Elephant by Sir Terry Pratchett, opening up a whole new world of possibilities.

Nowadays, my tastes range from sci-fi to romance, hard non-fiction to high fantasy. My bookshelf hosts everything from Bill Bryson, Oliver Burkeman, Tolkien, and Stephen King, to John Green (both fiction and non-fiction), and Graham Norton. There’s also One Hundred Years of Solitude, but that has a rare spot on my Did Not Finish list.

But as my days grew harder and longer, it became far quicker to get sucked into Reddit than it did actual books or even blogs. Where once I was able to devour Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in three days after its release, now I’m lucky to manage 20 pages an hour, and even then that’s assuming I can read for an hour without interruption from work, sleep, or Priorities.

The way out? Read wider, read better, and sharpen that mind. Replace that instinct to fire up social media and pick up a book, find a new and engaging blog, read an essay in the Atlantic. Actually stretch my mind rather than let it rot. Go back to that salvation, and sharpen my sword.