What We Talk About When We Talk About Reading, Part 2

Subject Matter

I've been asked before, on occasion, what it is that I read over the course of a day. (In fact, my favorite question to ask at book signings of authors is, "What are you reading?" even though I may never jump into their literary choices. It's kind of like glimpsing into someone's medicine cabinet.) In addition to books (I'll address how I select those in a moment) I have a variety of other sources for reading and therefore lots of material to respond to in my writing. Currently I'm at around 5% each of the two Kindle books that I read from daily, about 50 pages a day from a paperback I'm reading, and two articles a day from that week's New Yorker magazine. In terms of internet surfing, here's what I dip into on a daily basis:

• I check my Yahoo! e-mail--that's usually the source for my writing group information
• ProBlogger, which publishes a daily post on how to successfully blog
• Powell's Books, both their websites for book "Review-A-Day" and their Books Blog, which is supported creatively by a rotating roster of authors who guest-blog
• Twitter. Twitter gets a lot of crap for the same reasons that Facebook gets a lot of crap, but both are so intricate now that you can pretty much treat them like a salad bar--if you pick the right blend of feeds and notifications you get the best combination of news and entertainment. If you don't pick the right blend for you, you have what amounts to an informational compost heap. I find that I have to be flexible enough to constantly tweak my Twitter streams as well--if I don't, I get discouraged pretty easily.
• Google. For me, Google is like an iceberg--I'm sure I see only about a quarter of what I could be seeing or using. I usually check e-mail (best and safest e-mail in my opinion), Google Reader (which gives me a comprehensive one-page update of all of the blogs I'm following), and Google News. News gets a skimming on Google--I can usually (sadly) catch the same feed of stories on Facebook or may have already seen most of it on Twitter. The Reader is eclectic and is sort of like an unabridged version of Twitter; categories include: Bay Area, Books and Literary Adventures, Creating Good Habits, Language Adventures (I subscribe to Spanish, French, and Italian blogs), and Travel.
• NPR. Probably not the most objective place to get my news, but what is? I find it's the least assaultive place to get my news.
• Monster/CareerBuilder/LinkedIn--to keep the career opportunities fresh.
• Facebook. Ugh. I have made many comparisons in my hatred of Facebook, from comparing it to Walmart to comparing it to a high school clique or a college fraternity. Like Twitter, I've tweaked my feeds on Facebook: if a friend spends all of their status updates on how great their kids and husband are, I tend to turn off the feed and just check on them occasionally. I also hide stuff about any game or event on Facebook that has a title that ends in "-ville" or "Wars"--this kind of activity is roughly on par with watching paint dry. I do tune into feeds that keep it real--book/movie/music recommendations, marathons ran, dishes attempted and cooked or ruined, thoughts on the political climate. I tend not to care where people are, so location feeds only excite me if I've been there, too. A bonus for me on Facebook is that I'm nearly invisible--I don't have more than a hundred friends on Facebook and I don't generate a constant or large number of comments. That, and most of my friends have better things to do than to read me. (In contrast, I have 100 followers on Twitter, but that's a different crowd.)

In terms of choosing books to read once I've finished one, I have a particular method of selection. I think on my religion, or better, my spirituality. I know that God has more important things to do than to help me to choose what to read, just as President Obama has more important things to do than to talk to Oprah on the day his "long-form" birth certificate comes out. But I would like to think that God enjoys the task of helping me choose a book, and maybe that's why I feel like He's present when the next book selection happens. Perhaps it's not even Him--perhaps the spirit is some aspect of my mother instead--but I like to believe that God loves a good story. Why else the Bible? Why else the by-lines in the New Testament of the same event told in the voice of a variety of different people? "According to Matthew, this is what happened." "But according to Mark, THIS is what happened."

Oh, for heaven's sake.

So some visage of God comes along with me to bookstores, libraries, or to browse the shelves of what my roommate has in the living room. God sits on shoulders of firemen and soldiers, yes, so why not me? 'Tis a strange way to be guided, to be sure. (And before you lock me up, no, I don't believe I'm "chosen" for this. It's kind of like prayer--I believe anyone can do it. This happens to be the most effective way for me to pray.) Because I have such a black-and-white approach to the world I have tried many times to break this process down into a science, but it's not a science. Neither is it something happening because I've been "saved"--as a Unitarian I struggle with that salvation piece. (Trust me when I write this--you don't want to chase down this rabbit now.) Instead, it's akin to picking up an instrument and playing, or knowing how to shoot a gun or crochet a sweater; it presents itself as a repeated display of muscle memory.

In this light, I can give you pieces of what happens in a bookstore, library, or bookshelves. I often browse the entire store or library first, quickly, just to get a feel for the space. (For the San Francisco Library I just browse fiction for this trick.) Then I narrow my search to a particular letter of the alphabet or specialized section (like "New Arrivals" or "Staff Picks"), and begin opening volumes. I flip through, read jacket summaries, look deeply into typeface (can I live with Helvetica on cream linen for 400 pages?), and admire cover artwork. There's a courtship here. I put books back and go to new ones I've previously opened. And, when the time is right, I start working around with first chapters.

Those first chapters are the final step--God and I find my literary dance partner for the next 400 pages and we have a winner. Why, you may ask yourself or ask me, would this be so important? Why put so much emphasis on it? Not to be ungrateful, but I've had so much required reading in my life (former literature student) and so many bad recommendations in my life ("Oh, you like books? You should read THIS...") that this is my sacred pleasure. I'll ask others how they liked books, I'll raid reviews for bits and pieces of information, but at the end of the day this final selection process works. There are so many books and so little time that this method keeps me from wasting time with books I won't finish. I tweak the process at the selection or root cause, and this continual check and adjust with the aid of a Divine Spirit seems to give me the confidence I need to read a book I enjoy.

Onward, dear reader.

Post Script--You may wonder: Since Kindle books aren't in a store, what's the process for those?

SHEER IMPULSE BUY. NO TRICKS UP MY SLEEVE AT ALL FOR THOSE. On the flip side, I have so many Kindle books that I haven't read because of that. *Sigh*