No new books this week as I’ve been unusually restrained. Things have been quieter than usual here lately, I seem to have been stuck in a mild reading rut. Just not at all inclined to pick up a book. I don’t think anything in particular has caused it, just necessary to take a break and watch lots of Gilmore Girls. A Sunday afternoon spent in bed with Transmetropolitan graphic novels (and a “oh my God why alcohol why” sized hangover) may have yanked me out of my reading rut, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Do you have any suggested remedies for breaking out of a reading rut? Or do you just ride it out until the urge to read hits again?
Posts on Start Narrative Here this week:
- Recently Abandoned: August 2010 – the books I couldn’t get through last month.
- The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson – a quietly terrifying novel about a psychotically murderous deputy sheriff.
Last night I saw a documentary, William S. Burroughs: A Man Within (Yony Leyser, 2009), which explored the life and work of, you guessed it, one William S. Burroughs. Despite being more of a Kerouac and Ginsberg fan when it comes to the Beats, I really want to read more Burroughs. Maybe not the best thing to dive into when reluctant to read at all, but eventually. I read Junky, Queer and Interzone many moons ago, in high school, but perceptions and approaches change, and I think I’d like to see how I would read them now.
My high school fascination with the Beats was so well known – by the school librarians who I endlessly bothered with requests for Beat books from other libraries (we were a part of the local library system) – that at the end of year 12 when it came to the graduation ceremony, I was given an award, basically, for showing an active interest in reading, writing and libraries. Nerd then, nerd now. Anyway, I was presented with a lovely hardback edition of Kerouac’s letters. When I went to thank the librarian (polite nerd then, not so polite nerd now), she asked if there had been anything in the book itself. Nope. Then she let poor graduating high school student me know that the prize was actually for $250, but they needed something to present it in. I eventually got the cheque, and the moral of this story is: crime may not pay, but reading sometimes does.