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my reading project
Sep. 4th, 2021 12:13 amI haven't been much up to writing anything here lately, especially since I still have no desire whatsoever to write about my own life at the moment. Hopefully, if I begin writing up a long-term project, it will give me enough material to get back into a more regular posting schedule. I see writing here as a social activity, for which it is extremely important; as worthwhile in itself, because I do enjoy it; and also as resembling a pianist's finger exercises, because this is honestly where I learned and honed my nonfiction voice, which has been a significant life skill.
Anyway. David Bowie died in 2016. This upset me greatly, as he is monumentally important to me in several directions-- as a singer, certainly, but as an actor he made a real impression-- his Andy Warhol may be better at being Andy Warhol than Andy Warhol was, which would only be appropriate. He was also the first celebrity I encountered discussing being openly LGBT+, and for multiple years of my childhood the only one I could find at all, and then the only one I could find who wasn't tragic (Brian Epstein, the Beatles' manager, is quite high on my list of people some handy time traveler should remove to somewhere more congenial). I felt Bowie was far too young, and I hadn't been braced. I wanted to see him play King Lear.
I've been upset when public figures I care about have died before, but the thing is, and I know this is extremely lucky of me, I've either known people who knew them or at least gotten the chance to go an autograph session and mumble something about how life-changing they were to their faces. Bowie I had no personal connection to whatsoever, and I was shocked both by how upset I was and by how difficult it was for me to find some way to wrangle the emotion.
So, as a piece of grief-work, and also as an interesting thing to do which would take me out of my comfort zone, I decided to read through the list of one hundred favorite books that Bowie released on his website shortly before he died.
Now, I did not think this would take all that long. I once, documentably, read three hundred and sixty-six books in three hundred and sixty-five days, besides all the books I read in that time and didn't write up; I figured the biggest hurdle I'd encounter would be obtaining some of the books, because of the vagaries of trans-Atlantic releasing and retitling and whatnot.
Since January 2016, when Bowie died, not only have Ruth and I had a much-planned-and-longed-for pregnancy and childbirth, but the entire world catastrophically went to hell in a handbasket in many, many time-and-life-eating directions. I have not yet even come close to finishing this project, which on multiple occasions has fallen off my priority stack entirely, and I don't anticipate doing so anytime soon. I am not yet even halfway.
But I have kept going with it-- it has worked for me as grief-work, and has also reliably taken me out of my reading comfort zone, which is also the point. I feel that now is a reasonable time to do the very first part of the writeup, which is posting the list of books, indicating which ones I had read going in, indicating which ones I have read since, and putting up a very short summary of my opinions of the ones I've read so that others can indicate to me whether there is anything they are particularly interested in my writing on further. I don't promise I'll get to further anytime soon, either, but it gives me an idea on which to base future planning.
( Annotated list )
Anyway. David Bowie died in 2016. This upset me greatly, as he is monumentally important to me in several directions-- as a singer, certainly, but as an actor he made a real impression-- his Andy Warhol may be better at being Andy Warhol than Andy Warhol was, which would only be appropriate. He was also the first celebrity I encountered discussing being openly LGBT+, and for multiple years of my childhood the only one I could find at all, and then the only one I could find who wasn't tragic (Brian Epstein, the Beatles' manager, is quite high on my list of people some handy time traveler should remove to somewhere more congenial). I felt Bowie was far too young, and I hadn't been braced. I wanted to see him play King Lear.
I've been upset when public figures I care about have died before, but the thing is, and I know this is extremely lucky of me, I've either known people who knew them or at least gotten the chance to go an autograph session and mumble something about how life-changing they were to their faces. Bowie I had no personal connection to whatsoever, and I was shocked both by how upset I was and by how difficult it was for me to find some way to wrangle the emotion.
So, as a piece of grief-work, and also as an interesting thing to do which would take me out of my comfort zone, I decided to read through the list of one hundred favorite books that Bowie released on his website shortly before he died.
Now, I did not think this would take all that long. I once, documentably, read three hundred and sixty-six books in three hundred and sixty-five days, besides all the books I read in that time and didn't write up; I figured the biggest hurdle I'd encounter would be obtaining some of the books, because of the vagaries of trans-Atlantic releasing and retitling and whatnot.
Since January 2016, when Bowie died, not only have Ruth and I had a much-planned-and-longed-for pregnancy and childbirth, but the entire world catastrophically went to hell in a handbasket in many, many time-and-life-eating directions. I have not yet even come close to finishing this project, which on multiple occasions has fallen off my priority stack entirely, and I don't anticipate doing so anytime soon. I am not yet even halfway.
But I have kept going with it-- it has worked for me as grief-work, and has also reliably taken me out of my reading comfort zone, which is also the point. I feel that now is a reasonable time to do the very first part of the writeup, which is posting the list of books, indicating which ones I had read going in, indicating which ones I have read since, and putting up a very short summary of my opinions of the ones I've read so that others can indicate to me whether there is anything they are particularly interested in my writing on further. I don't promise I'll get to further anytime soon, either, but it gives me an idea on which to base future planning.
( Annotated list )
