A Change of Pace

I’ve decided to do something a little different in 2015.  I want to read every book I read cover-to-cover, twice.

2014 was a whirlwind year for me.  I read for relaxation and escape, but last year I read so voraciously I found I was rarely experiencing either.  Sixty books – one every six days – I sped through.  Not all was fluff (Socrates Meets Kant by Peter Kreeft, A Stillness at Appomattox by Bruce Catton, Everything and More by David Foster Wallace).  Some were thick tomes (11/22/63 by Stephen King, an anthology of Lovecraft’s works).  Many were classics (All Quiet on the Western Front, Billy Budd, Watership Down, The Iliad).  Trouble is, if I didn’t compulsively record everything I read, I would’ve forgotten half of everything I’ve read.

And that’s not something I’m comfortable with.

I want everything I read to become a part of me.  I want to absorb the good, worthy things I invest time with, even the “fluff” I use to escape the stresses and tensions of modern 21st-century life.

Hence, everything I read I will read twice. 

This is to side-step the urge I get, half-way through a book, to start a new one.  Plus, everything that passes my eyes and traverses the optic nerve to my brain will make the trip twice, reinforcing everything I learn and vicariously experience.

That’s something I want.

This time last year I had already read three books and a half-dozen short stories.  Since New Year’s Day of this year, I’m halfway through my second book.  (Though the first one I’ve read twice).  So it’s a bit slower, and definitely more focused, than my reading was a year ago.

A change of pace.  I like that.