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minnehaha K. asked "I would like to know how your reading life has changed since you were a girl."
That's a pretty large question, but the first difficulty is one that she probably hadn't thought of: I don't remember as much as I suspect some of my friends do. I do remember that I spent a lot of my free time reading, and that "I want to finish this paragraph/page first" was often an acceptable answer to things like "come set the table for dinner."
These days I'm more likely to finish a sentence while closing my book or shutting off the kindle, if the bus comes or the doctor's receptionist calls my name. But I think that's less about different kinds of patience, than about having fewer contexts in which "one minute please" is a plausible answer to "come do this": I set the table on my own schedule, and if I say "just a minute" the bus will leave without me.
I'm fairly sure I reread differently. I don't remember the stage of wanting to be read the same story over and over. I did some rereading as a girl, once I had learned to read for myself. I did more when I was a teenager, I think. These days I reread some, depending on the kind of book, but less than I did ten or fifteen years ago, I think. This is one reason it's even possible to cull the book collection; I know I won't reread most mysteries, and I've been buying and keeping books long enough to be able to see more places where my tastes have changed over time.
I'm not sure when I started having multiple books in progress at the same time. Right now it's likely to be one novel, and maybe a short story collection and/or work of nonfiction at home, and one book at a time on the kindle, for waiting rooms and the like. (Those tend toward fiction, but not exclusively.) I'm getting through all of those more slowly than I used to: I'm more easily distracted by blog posts, online short fiction, and crosswords than I used to be, or than I entirely like.
I lost a chunk of reading time in moving from New York City to the Pacific Northwest, because I can and do read comfortably on moving trains—and mostly got around New York on the subway or on foot—but start to get motion sick if I read in a moving car or bus. I spent about two hours on buses yesterday; on subways, that would have been a significant amount of reading. Here, I spent some of it looking out the window at unfamiliar streets and shops, and some listening to bits of other people's conversations, and wondering how long it would be until we got downtown and I could get a cup of tea.
minnehaha K. asked "I would like to know how your reading life has changed since you were a girl."That's a pretty large question, but the first difficulty is one that she probably hadn't thought of: I don't remember as much as I suspect some of my friends do. I do remember that I spent a lot of my free time reading, and that "I want to finish this paragraph/page first" was often an acceptable answer to things like "come set the table for dinner."
These days I'm more likely to finish a sentence while closing my book or shutting off the kindle, if the bus comes or the doctor's receptionist calls my name. But I think that's less about different kinds of patience, than about having fewer contexts in which "one minute please" is a plausible answer to "come do this": I set the table on my own schedule, and if I say "just a minute" the bus will leave without me.
I'm fairly sure I reread differently. I don't remember the stage of wanting to be read the same story over and over. I did some rereading as a girl, once I had learned to read for myself. I did more when I was a teenager, I think. These days I reread some, depending on the kind of book, but less than I did ten or fifteen years ago, I think. This is one reason it's even possible to cull the book collection; I know I won't reread most mysteries, and I've been buying and keeping books long enough to be able to see more places where my tastes have changed over time.
I'm not sure when I started having multiple books in progress at the same time. Right now it's likely to be one novel, and maybe a short story collection and/or work of nonfiction at home, and one book at a time on the kindle, for waiting rooms and the like. (Those tend toward fiction, but not exclusively.) I'm getting through all of those more slowly than I used to: I'm more easily distracted by blog posts, online short fiction, and crosswords than I used to be, or than I entirely like.
I lost a chunk of reading time in moving from New York City to the Pacific Northwest, because I can and do read comfortably on moving trains—and mostly got around New York on the subway or on foot—but start to get motion sick if I read in a moving car or bus. I spent about two hours on buses yesterday; on subways, that would have been a significant amount of reading. Here, I spent some of it looking out the window at unfamiliar streets and shops, and some listening to bits of other people's conversations, and wondering how long it would be until we got downtown and I could get a cup of tea.