Juvenile Nonfiction

Sometime in the last 18 months, my reading quota skyrocketed. I was unaware of how and when, exactly; what I know is that before 2009, I was having trouble finishing 52 books a year, and then during 2009 I finished upwards of 80 (and am well ahead of schedule this year).

I’ve given some cursory reflection to this, after the fact, and thought I’d share some of my tips for reading upwards of 52 books a year, if you share my ambitions.

1. Read more than one book at a time. This allows you to average the long books out with the short books, for one thing. A long or difficult book can monopolize your available reading time, and it can be discouraging to come to the end and realize you’ve got some catch-up to do to keep on pace. Following multiple narratives also keeps you from getting bored with your reading, and so stalling out on the project entirely. You might make them location or circumstance specific: read one only on your lunch hour and another only at bedtime (and a third only on the bus).

2. Rediscover poetry and young adult fiction. Poetry counts. A volume of poems is often as rewarding in its own way as a novel, and much much easier to get through. And work your way through the Newbery winners — they’re classics, they read quickly, and you’ll find yourself better in tune with the worlds your kids are living in or will live in soon.

3. Read down to your children. What I mean is, read books to your children that are above their age/reading level. My son could not read The Hobbit or The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe on his own, but he loves listening to them, and I love revisiting them. I can help my kids comprehend and contextualize passages as we discuss the book. And my children are being stretched by the material. When we finish, my children will have a broader cultural base than they otherwise could have, and I will be one step closer to book 52.

4. Use the in-between occasions. Trip to the post office? Walk and read. Gotta go? Take your book to the bathroom with you. You can push lights-out 10 minutes later to get through a few pages. Reading is essentially a journey taken a page at a time. Use the in-between moments to take a step or two.

5. Make it a priority. You don’t read because you don’t think it’s as important as working/doing-the-dishes/LOST/etc. Reading is rewarding in and of itself, inherently. If you don’t think so, you won’t make time to do it.

6. Write about what you read. Documenting interesting passages, taking a moment to jot down your thoughts about a theme or character, keeping a reading diary to remind you of plots — all of these help you contextualize and remember what you’ve read, and they become encouragements for further reading. Use a site like Readernaut, and your diary will double as a prompt for further reading. If you write about it, you’ll remember it better. You’ll also begin to develop over time a feeling for which authors, genres, stories are compelling to you, which will in turn motivate you to press on to new titles.

You can do this. I believe in you. Go. Get started.

Read a book.

A slim volume (free ebook), developed from a sermon. Driscoll is a polarizing figure, garnering both acclaim and scorn for his blend of extreme conservatism with the emergent church model. Most of the way, this reads like the barest gloss on Proverbs (“…14:26 says, ‘In the fear of the LORD one has strong confidence, and his children will have a refuge.’ … [So,] the safest place for children is with a man who fears the Lord.”), which isn’t bad. But Driscoll drifts into behaviorism and a shocking lack of grace, admonishing a failing father for his lack of wisdom by (obliquely) recommending he shoot his daughter’s boyfriend and summarily excommunicating Christians-who-sin from the Church. I don’t mind separating the wheat from the chaff. Really, I don’t. But I bet I could find a follower of Jesus to give me sound scriptural advice on fatherhood without demanding that I sift through this deadly legalism to find it.

(Update: I neglected to point out Driscoll’s conviction that it’s a Biblical mandate that a Godly father make a lot of money, which he emphatically asserts but takes little time to flesh out. It follows from the mandate to provide for his family, which, I’m not sure, but I think our role in provision is at the very most as a team member and probably more likely as a charity case.)

A colleague loaned this to me. It’s of a piece with writing of the time — squarely avant-garde, almost poetry, Sixties San Francisco. The phrase “Trout fishing in America” becomes a synecdoche, both for a number of representative people, places, thoughts, actions relating to America and for America itself. There’s something elegiac about it: Brautigan may feel that Trout fishing represents something both fundamental about and increasingly missing in his America, as especially represented by a late chapter in which he visits a scrapyard where they’re selling lengths of Trout fishing creeks and various waterfalls. His voice is relentlessly fun, and he’s willing to follow his pen to almost any absurdity it intends. A unique, quirky little book — one that’ll probably get stuck in my synapses long after it should reasonably have faded.

…since I recommended new music. Jeff Anderson has come into his own headspace (finally!), and Anderson Cale has released a self-titled set of instrumentals that make for great working music — stirring, well done, semi-ambient stuff. Go get it on iTunes and support a great couple of guys. (And hey, Anderson Cale: Bandcamp eats MySpace for breakfast. Get on that!!)

The story goes like this: my wife brought this home from book club. It’s Michigan’s The Big Read, see, and one of her fellow bookclubbers works at the Ferndale Public Library and had a raft of copies. Zena’s not interested, though — all she can think of is Garrison Keillor’s Guy Noir. But she picks it up, and when I needle her about it a few days later, she’s done a 180, she loves it, she can’t get enough of it, see? Which is enough to pique my interest, and here we are.

It’s a page turner, that’s for sure, with a great lead character, Sam Spade, a hard-boiled Detective who doesn’t trust anyone, listens when money talks and treats women like he owns them. He’s got an ethic, but it’s not a moral ethic — if your partner gets iced, you find and capture his killer, and you don’t chase a rabbit just to let him go.

It was amusing, reading the genesis of decades of Tough Dick Cliché. I’ve never seen the movie, so I came to it fresh — didn’t know a thing about the plot. Lots of descriptions of yellow or glowing eyes, set jaws, weak knees, etc. Very of its time. Women were dames and men were Men, a certain decorum reigned even among the riff raff, untrustworthy elements were “swarthy” or “Levantine,” on and on. Can you see why it would be enchanting?

If you can, I recommend it.

Juvenile Nonfiction is Joshua Neds-Fox’s blog v.3, internetted lovingly to you from Detroit, Michigan.

I’m worth $1MM in prizes. I am without excuse.

I’ve redesigned this thing a mere two times. This is its third iteration. It’s using WordPress, for the first time. This theme was adapted from the standard, Kubrick. Border elements prefacing the ‘comments’ were graciously provided by Barrett Stanley, from his 100 Erased Lincolns.

Try joshua, here at neds-fox.com, via electronic mail, should you want to get in touch with me.

I hope you’re happy.