2024.09.26
Funny how some novels or maybe novelists just grab you? I suspect, as with my tastes in music, there are a few specific styles that easily draw me in; in music it's a song being bass heavy and with a funk-tinged, high-contrast beat. With a novel, I guess it's just a few notes of interior life framing moods and times that remind me of my own romantic travails.
I contrast that to what the book club I was in at work was choosing; the democratic choices leaned into middle-brow action-y murder mystery things. (There was one other person in the group who mirrored some of my own geeky preferences but the two of us were out numbered.) Like, at first I thought a scheduled monthly half-hour to discuss the book we just finished was ridiculously small, but given the heft of we were reading, it kinda made sense.
It seems like these books always have ex-military men and nurses. When I was at the gift shop of Shady Maple (the "US's Largest Smorgasbord") I saw a lot of military- and nurse- themed swag, like more so than for ther careers, and it kind of hit me that those were the heavily "most acceptable" prestige careers for men and women to respectively have as in terms of certain demographics.
Anyway, novels are a nice indulgence of funemployment, I wonder if I should branch out more. After Intermezzo I'm half tempted to reread "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", which I purchased recently just to quote a passage that has stuck in my head for a few decades.
I guess it's a question if reading fully deserves all it's vibe of being more rewarding than, say, swimming through social media. (And always fun to think back to when novels were seen as kind of a scandalous frivolity.)
I do find my patience for TV series to be thin. I'm not used to being quite that picky about things. I am half tempted to start a regimen of watching well-regarded movies I missed. (I carry the assumption that a good 2 hour movie will have a better "cool idea to time spent ratio" than even the best TV series, but I'm not sure if that's entirely true.)
Of course, I can't let myself get TOO used to this, and I should turn my attention and energies to doubling down on the job hunt. "Pretirement" - is that a word? - is just too seductive at times.
also still Iove the iPad mini (2019/5th gen) as a reader. can read in a dim room, it's very responsive, I can do color highlights, easy to hold, and it's a drawing tablet as well
