make time for reading every week

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks and Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman (though my copy isn’t the 10th anniversary edition, but an old copy from the bookshop I volunteer at – I’ll check out the 10th anniversary one afterwards.) I’ll write more when I finish them but, they both are wonderful books about what make us human.

I’m reading quite a few books at the moment, as I’m trying to teach myself various things, but this is the one I’m reading for pleasure – it’s a book I found in the second-hand bookshop I volunteer for, a collection of true stories from the “Nobel Prize-winning physicist, accomplished bongo-player and artist” Richard Feynman. I’m about halfway through it, and I like the stories a lot – the stories themselves aren’t that well-written or easy to read, but they’re good stories, and they do paint a great portrait of a fascinating and inspiring man. I especially loved the title story (you can read it here), of him and his first love Arlene. It made me choke up a little. After I finish this, I’ll have to seek out his first collection of stories, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! :)

Edit: Heh, from a Youtube comment I just saw: According to the book “The Pleasure of Finding Things Out”, it is claimed that Feynman can beat 10 times with his right hand and 11 times with his left hand SIMULTANEOUSLY! And it is said that this is more difficult than quantum electrodynamics!

as it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to have whole afternoons or evenings free for reading with any regularity. I would still like to find more time for it than ten minutes before bed or fifteen minutes on the train – I can’t really enjoy a book that way.

During the last break (yeah, a while back) I had more time to read, and finished a Pocket Penguin book, Short Short Stories by Dave Eggers, which is really just a collection of his short stories that appeared in the Guardian in 2004. They are… okay. They would be good to read in a newspaper, but probably don’t justify a book. I find that outside of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which was mostly about himself and his brother (and which I loved) – I haven’t really liked anything else of his I’ve read. Apart from a short story called “After I Was Thrown in the River and Before I Drowned”, the whole thing of which you can read here.

There was nothing like that in Short Short Stories – it appears to me that while he is a wonderful writer, he’s not very good at writing characters – they all seem to be identifiably him. But it wasn’t that bad really, and there were stories that I liked: “The Weird Wife” and “On Making Someone A Good Man By Calling Him a Good Man”. But mostly these are more newspaper columns, in which he is quite funny, but often digresses to rant about Bush.

Anyway, just a book I’d had for ages and wanted to finish. Now I’m going through a book of Ernest Hemingway short stories, and finding it a bit hard going. There’s a lot of death. I liked the first couple of stories, but the tone seems to be unrelentingly grim so far. And I don’t think I really enjoy the way he writes, though there’s much to admire about it – even when I was reading The Old Man and the Sea, which I enjoyed, his writing style felt a bit dry. I’ll stick with it for a bit longer though, and hope it gets better.

I’d heard some great things about this book over the years, but only got round to checking it out recently. It is as good as they say.

She gives great advice on writing and life (because they are kind of the same), she writes wonderfully, and – something that doesn’t happen that often – I got a really strong impression that I would really like Anne Lamott, as a person, if we ever met.

One of the best things about the book for me is her sense of humour – and her making our self-absorption and bitterness and petty jealousies so funny and human.

I wonder if her other books would be as good, especially her novels – will be seeking them out!

but a short story on the internet. It’s a pretty good one: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Rappaccini’s Daughter (link to full text), written in 1844. Came across it via everything2, really enjoyed it. It’s apparently considered one of the first works of science fiction, although I’d say it’s more a sci-fi-romance-mystery-horror type thing – which is a much more succinct description I’m sure you’ll agree :)