Saturday, June 12, 2010

I don't understand summer reading lists.

It feels like I've been less productive since I got married. I realize I'm not. I spend my days almost the same as I did before I was married, but now I do it with someone else. Maybe it's that I feel obligated to spend all my free time with my wife. It has only been a little beyond three weeks, so I suppose it's normal to feel bad when I want to spend the day reading instead of hanging out with her. Eventually we'll get more comfortable with each other and be able to do things together but seperately.

It could also be that she monopolizes my laptop though. . .

Also, it's almost summer, and my body wants to leave my apartment, wants to romp and play. There's a state park near here that the wife and I intend to check out Monday or Tuesday. We also like to walk to the farmers market on Saturdays. I found out there's a Shakespeare festival in town this summer as well. I'm hoping to see The Tempest and The Merry Wifes of Windsor this July. If my days off weren't so damned awkward, I could say I'll see them for certain, but they're only performing on two of my days off the entire month.


I've begun a makeshift "reading list" this summer. The quotation marks and the word makeshift are to indicate that it is a list in the loosest meaning of the term. The original notion was to read short, easy novels and to see how many I could pound through in three months. I've done four since June began: The Last Unicorn, Slaughterhouse-five, The Great Gatsby, and Joey Comeau's collection of short stories, It's Too Late to Say I'm Sorry. (I know most people either assume I re-read the top first three or are amazed I'd never read them before, but I was just finally getting around to it, okay?) The slump has already begun, however, as after The Great Gatsby I chose to read George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss. Not exactly a complex novel, but at 546 pages, it's not exactly a short one either. Just 400 more pages to go and then it's back to short, simple novels or collections of short stories. I thought about joining a book club, but I don't like being told what to read.

I don't understand summer reading lists for non-students, really. An average adult with a full-time job doesn't have more time during the summer months. If they have kids, they would probably have less time. Unless it's stictly a seasonal thing, reading "summer books." I can't quite think of what I'd consider a "summer book," though. Something like Pickwick, maybe? Something involving a romp. Something about people getting drunk and falling down.