So Much Reading, So Little Time
How I have managed to read many classics I ignored most of my life
Everyone has those books that they’ve always wanted to read, but they just never managed to find the time. For me, that book was Moby-Dick. I had picked this one up on many occasions, telling myself I had to do it. It was important. I love the first chapter. Love it. I consider it one of the best opening chapters ever written. I’ve read that chapter four or five times, but every time I started this novel, considered one of the greatest of all classics, I would find myself bogged down by the density of the prose, and eventually just abandon it for something else.
Some might say this is a flaw in the work. But not really, it’s just a difference of perspective, how attention spans have changed over the years. I knew the writing was excellent, and the story was epic. Clearly it has remained admired for all these years for multiple reasons, being a powerful story of monomaniacal obsession and revenge, and written in a lavish and stylishly evocative prose. I’m just a shitty reader, with the modern attention span of a gnat.
Then, in early 2020, around May I believe, I had an epiphany that changed the way I managed my time and reading habits dramatically. In my career path, I work at a job that allows me a lot of down time. Basically for…
