Untitled 42 (On books, part 2)
Sophist - noun - a person who reasons with clever but fallacious arguments
Obsequious - adjective - obedient or attentive to an excessive or servile degree
Sertraline - proper noun - sold under the brand name Zoloft among others, is an antidepressant of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor class.
Procellous - adjective - turbulent, stormy
Since late 2018, I have kept track of all the books I’ve read in a little Google Sheet I made.
I could use Goodreads to do this, but somehow it’s nicer in my own spreadsheet. I guess I’m just a grumpy old lady who likes to do things her own way. It’s colorful, orderly, and contains all the things I think are most important. I scrape the Goodreads website for basic info about the book (publication year, page count, etc.) as well as the average rating from Goodreads users. I include my own tags, ratings (from 1 to 5 stars; I try to avoid giving half stars), completion date, and thoughts about the book. I look up author demographic info so that I don’t end up only reading books by white men.
I take screenshots (if reading through my phone) or photos (if reading a physical book) of sections I like or find noteworthy. I also take screenshots of new words so I can look them up later (I have a whole folder on my phone for vocabulary words I’m supposed to learn but never do).
I track various metrics.
Books I’ve read since I started (158).
Average books per week (0.8).
Breakdown by fiction vs nonfiction, by publication year, by year I completed the book, by author gender and race, by the difference between my score and the Goodreads score.
All this data exists in my Google Drive.
But what do I do with this information? Why am I collecting this list? What do I read for?
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid (published 2019 | 310 pages | Goodreads: 3.8 | Me: 5)
“Sometimes, when she was particularly broke, Emira convinced herself that if she had a real job, a nine-to-five position with benefits and decent pay, then the rest of her life would start to resemble adulthood as well. She’d do things like make her bed in the morning, and she’d learn to start liking coffee. She wouldn’t sit on the floor in her bedroom, discovering new music and creating playlists until three a.m…”
”Kelley looked like he was being filmed for the intro of an extremely problematic music video.”
The Stranger by Albert Camus (published 1942 | 123 pages | Goodreads: 4.0 | Me: 4)
“…for the first time in months, I distinctly heard the sound of my own voice. I recognized it as the same one that had been ringing in my ears for many long days, and I realized that all that time I had been talking to myself.”
“But I couldn’t understand how an ordinary man’s good qualities could become crushing accusations against a guilty man.”
I remember in middle school or so, hearing a proverb -
Small minds discuss people. Average minds discuss events. Great minds discuss ideas.
At the time, I thought it to be so insightful.
And now I think -
What hogwash.
Whinge - verb - complain persistently and in a peevish or irritating way
Dilettante - noun - a person who cultivates an area of interest, such as the arts, without real commitment or knowledge
Fusillade - noun - a series of shots fired or missiles thrown all at the same time or in quick succession
The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa (published 2019 | 198 pages | Goodreads: 3.74 | Me: 4)
“Books can’t live your life for you.”
“Reading isn’t only for pleasure or entertainment. Sometimes you need to examine the same line deeply… and the result of all this hard work and careful study is that suddenly you’re there and your field of vision expands. Its like finding a great view at the end of a long climbing trail.”
It is notable that while for individual books, there can be a significant difference between the average Goodreads score compared to my own rating (The Once and Future Witches had a Goodreads score of 4.19 while I gave it a 1) the overall average difference between us is a mere 0.03. My average rating is 4.04 while Goodreads gave these same books an average of 4.07.
The Idiot by Elif Batuman (published 2017 | 423 pages | Goodreads: 3.66 | Me: 4)
“Well, look… your composition in the drawings is… okay. I can be honest with you right? But these paintings seem to me… sort of little-girlish?” “The thing is, it wasn’t so long ago that I was a little girl.”
“You wanted to know why Anna had to die, and instead they told you that nineteenth-century Russian landowners felt conflicted about whether they were really a part of Europe. The implication was that it was somehow naive to want to talk about anything interesting.”
“My love for you is for the person writing your letters.”
“Dread clenched my stomach. I liked that I had won a contest… but I didn’t want my story to be published… I didn’t want anyone to think I thought it was good.”
“Ivan wanted to try an experiment, a game. It would never have worked on someone different, on someone like me. But you, you’re so disconnected from truth, you were so ready to jump into a reality the two of you made up, just through language.
“It turned out that Nora’s tendency to run to her grandparents’ house was well-known. It was because of the cake.”
“She’s in my story - I’m not in hers.”
“…everyone experiences their own life as a narrative. If you didn’t have some kind of ongoing story in mind, how would you know who you were when you woke up in the morning?”
Once upon a time, I spun up little short stories.
Whimsical. Absurd.
Light. Airy.
I wrote them for friends. I wrote them for myself.
I thought they all disappeared into the ether of the internet but one day a friend pulled out a document saved from the early 2000’s.
I was so embarrassed.
What a lifetime ago.
But how amazing that he thought to save something so silly, so forgettable. Something meant to be ephemeral suddenly given life and longevity in a way unforseeable.
Cuirass - noun - a piece of armor consisting of breastplate and backplate fastened together
Histrionic - adjective - overly theatrical or melodramatic in character or style
Louche - adjective - disreputable or sordid in a rakish or appealing way
Comportment - noun - behavior; bearing
“The process of writing was important. Even though the finished product is completely meaningless.”