I don't blog--clearly, given my last post on this blog was two years ago--but I read some of them, in particular Jack Pendarvis' which is the inspiration for this post and for blogging today in general.
I like books. I like to read. I fear that my attention span is lessening the older I get. And this is why:
On my Goodreads page, I checked in just now to see when I had started the two Bucket List books I planned on reading this year--said books are Suttree by Cormac McCarthy and A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole--[an aside: I'm a bad Knoxvillian as I've never read either Suttree nor A Death in the Family and I'm a bad Southerner as I've never read Dunces before now. Aside over]
I discovered that I started Dunces in April and Suttree in May. Now, here it is the middle of August and I haven't a). finished either of them and b). read on them since probably June. The question now is: should I finish them? (To who, exactly, am I asking this question?)
Understand, I have read and finished three books since I started Dunces and Suttree. I've read a tremendous amount of short fiction--which you probably could count on Goodreads, but I haven't looked into how, yet--and I've, of course, read countless blog posts and other ephemera.
But I haven't finished my "Bucket List" books--another aside, of course I know it's silly to call Dunces and Suttree "Bucket List" books because I may not finish them this year and I may not read them again next and really who the hell cares if I read them or not? Anyone? Anyone? Clear eyes?
And I know it is some measure of pressure I'm putting on myself to finish these books, (which books I have enjoyed thus far, don't get me wrong. They aren't a struggle to read, well, Dunces isn't, Suttree is...dense to be sure.)
I suppose my point is that the size of these two books, Dunces clocks in at 405 pages, Suttree at 480, are such that I find it difficult to keep at them when there are so many books I own and are coming out and I haven't read and all of the above which are shorter--but some no less dense--than these two. The last three books I read were shorter--George Singleton's Between Wrecks (300), Daniel Wallace's The Kings and Queens of Roan (304) and Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician (304).
There's also the question of a lessening attention span. Do I read shorter things--and consequently want to write short stories--because I find it harder to keep up with something more involved? I find it doubly hard to keep up with series television unless my wife wants to watch also, eg. I'm watching True Detective now and I've only watched the second episode and that was last week, I mean, it's OnDemand so I can watch it anytime, but I don't.
So, I shout into the ether and don't even get the courtesy of an echo in return. Or as the Black Lectroid said: "So what. Big deal."
