Self Diagnosis: I'm a Reading Mess.

In the same way that I cannot make my brain think linearly, I cannot read linearly. I was excited for the freedom of summer because I really believed that I would read one book, start to finish, and then begin the next one.

Well, that was a lovely thought.

It started reading Harry Potter at night because they were too heavy to carry around. Then I read Gilead, (diverting from my summer list, but checking a book off the shelf of books I own but haven't read) but wasn't as engaged so when I got bored, I'd read a short story by Alice Munro (also not on the list, but on the shelf). I finished Gilead and my book club started The Known World. Well. What about Alice? And what about Shadow Cities? That one is half way done, too. Not to mention the excerpts I've read this week from Surprised by Joy (CS Lewis), The Magnificent Defeat (Frederick Buechner) and Reading Like a Writer (Francine Prose). Aye. I think it's just that there is so much that I want to learn and think about. It's overwhelming. In a good way, I guess. I just want to devour and process and talk about so many things--and the rate at which great things are published doesn't help!

I suppose that I just need to come to grips that I am not a linear person. At all. Sometimes that really stresses me out and I try to become a person who doesn't operate on a completely web based design. (Old school web, that is. Think circle in the middle of your paper with lots of branches.) But without fail, I return to my ways of overstuffed bookshelves and piles waiting for me and I dabble in all of them until I finish. Whenever that may be. And I usually do. Finish, that is.

And that's ok.

That feels therapeutic to type out.

Interestingly enough, (well, interesting to me and maybe 2 other people) I am a person who likes my apartment to be orderly and my classroom to be without clutter. I may or may not organize my sock drawer. How does that fit into my reading tendencies? Seriously. Ha.