Reading Goals and Big Books

Most years I set myself a reading goal. I keep track of the books I’d like to read in a spreadsheet, where I list the title, the author, the date I finished the book, and my rating (from 1 to 5). At the end of the year the books that I didn’t read roll over to next year’s list, while the books that I finished are removed to make room for new wanna-reads.

This year my goal is to read 24 books from the list of 60 or so on the spreadsheet. It’s a fairly modest goal. I’ve always enjoyed reading, but I don’t want it to become a chore. I have a lot of work-related reading that I have to do and which can take up quite a bit of time, and quite often I’d just rather watch TV and let my brain coast for a while. Even though my reading goal is modest, I’ve noticed that as the end of the year approaches I usually have to resort to reading the shorter books on the list in order to achieve it. This means that the longer books on my list tend not to get read. Now I like reading Big Books; Big Books don’t intimidate me. Of my Top 10 Favorite Books of All Time, about half of them are books that I would consider to be Big Books. So it’s a little disheartening that my reading goals would actually work to discourage me from reading them.

One year I didn’t set myself a reading goal. The idea was that I would then be free to read some Big Books that would otherwise remain unread out of worry that I wouldn’t reach my goal. But the result that year was that I actually read quite a bit less than usual, and the Big Books remained unread anyway. Clearly, some sort of accounting must be made for me to see progress.

As of today (10 November 2021), I’ve read 23 books, so I’m on track to achieve my reading goal for the year — as long as I finish a book before 31 December. But again, I’ve neglected the Big Books on my list. I obviously need a different kind of accounting so that the Big Books get some readerly love. So here’s what I’m going to do next year. Last night, I found the page counts of all of the books that I’ve read this year and included them in my spreadsheet. I then totaled up the page counts (9434 pages) and divided that total by the number of books I’ve read so far (23). This gave me an average book length of 410.2 pages. So rounding down a bit, a book typical of the sort that I’m inclined to read is 400 pages long or so, and 25 of them comes to 10,000 pages. So instead of reading 24 (or 25 or 30 or 40) books next year, my goal will be to read 10,000 pages. I think 10,000 pages is an easily achievable goal.

Now you may be thinking that depending on the publisher, genre, layout, etc., a page can have a greatly varying number of words on it, and that page count isn’t really a good guide to how much one has actually read — word count is obviously the count that matters. And you would be right. But the number of pages is a better metric than the number of books; and until publishers start reporting word count as well as page count in the metadata observable on online bookstores and other book-related websites, word count isn’t really a practical metric. I mean, I suppose I could count the number of words on a typical page of a book I want to read (or several pages and take an average) and then do the math myself (number of words per page multiplied by the number of pages). But that’s more work than I want to put into it — I do have my TV shows to keep up with, after all.

Going to the Library

I like going to the campus library. I like the short walk from my office to the building itself. I like browsing the stacks. I like that little flush of success when I’ve found the book I actually came in to find. I like talking to the library staff, attractive young people who are courteous and pleasant. I like the building itself. It is clean, well-furnished, and spacious, with lots of little corners containing study carrels and potted plants. I especially like the idea of a library. Having a cross-section of the collected knowledge of our civilization all in one place is a great thing.

So why are they trying to keep me from coming? While in the library today, I was reminded no less than twice that I didn’t have to come in – I could have the faculty delivery service bring the book(s) I want directly to my office. What’s the fun in that? I wouldn’t get to leave my office and walk to the library, roam the stacks, and enjoy that little frisson of accomplishment at having found the book myself, or be able to talk to those nice young people in case I need some help.

Maybe they’ll read a book to me over the phone if I ask them to, just as I’m going to sleep tonight. Then I won’t even have to hold it in my hands.

[This entry was originally a Facebook post from 1 September, 2010.]

An Astronomical Moment on my Morning Walk

I was on my daily walk this morning, walking due south along a suburban street in Spanish Fork. It was about 6:30 am. The sun hadn’t come up yet so it was still dark. I happened to look to my left, and I saw Venus rising over the mountains to the east. When I looked to my right, I could see Mars setting. And then I turned my face forward and looked up and and I saw Sirius directly in front of me. In that moment I felt … “triangulated,” like I was attached by strings to those celestial objects and pinned like a photograph on a TV detective’s cosmic cork board. I was moving at a fairly brisk pace, but I may as well have been on a giant treadmill, with the Earth rolling beneath me as I walked in place.

Entrata

When I was a junior in high school I heard this piece on the radio and was captivated by the repeating bass line ||: do _ re | do _ re :|| (I guess I was a minimalist even then). I later transcribed what I could remember of it (a brief stretch beginning around 0:41 in the recording linked below) in a notebook I carried around with me. In that notebook I titled it “Introit (Orff),” not realizing that it was actually an arrangement of William Byrd’s “The Bells.” I’ve thought about the piece off and on over the years. This morning I was thinking about it again and I finally found it — not “Introit” but “Entrata.” And just as wonderful as I remembered it.

Carl Orff, “Entrata”

[This entry was originally a Facebook post from 17 January, 2020.]

The Salt Lake City Public Library

I was struck this morning by a memory of going to the old SLC public library, when it occupied the building that now houses the Leonardo Museum. It was a late morning in the summer, probably a Saturday, and I was on the west side of the 5th floor where the music and art holdings were. I was sitting at a table thumbing through a copy of Steve Reich’s Writings about Music. I had just graduated from high school.

The southwest corner of the 5th floor was devoted to the library’s record collection. I listened to a lot of new music and even some recordings of Balinese gamelan (distributed by outfits like Nonesuch in their Explorer series). The guy at the desk, seeing that I was interested in new music, even made some suggestions: a mix of hits, like Pendercki (the Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima was a sonic gut punch) and misses, like Xenakis (I still just can’t). That record collection is where I learned about music written after 1900.

Everything felt new, even though it was library-old. Even the dust motes lit by the sun coming in through the windows on the east side where there was a little courtyard with a pool.

Man, I miss that place.

The Day After Coming Home from a Big Trip

Yesterday afternoon we came home from a week-long trip to London, and I’m ready to go back. Or to go to New York. Or Amsterdam. Or Berlin. Or LA. Somewhere. Anywhere. This happens whenever I come back from a big trip: I feel a great need to go travel some more — to go do something somewhere else. And it doesn’t matter how long I’ve been gone. Three years ago, I co-directed our department’s Study Abroad program to the British Isles. It was 7 weeks of pretty stressful travel and teaching and riding herd on a group of students (who were actually really great), and when it was time to leave, I was happy to leave. But when I got home, I wanted to go somewhere else right away.

I don’t think it’s a desire to avoid my regular duties — at least not this time. My courses for Winter Semester are pretty much prepared and I have no big projects that have been on hold while I’ve been away. Speaking more generally, I’m not dissatisfied with how my life usually runs. I’ve got it pretty good. A family who I love and who loves me, a comfortable house, a good job that provides a steady income that meets our needs and allows us the occasional excursion, good friends, etc. All in all, a pretty sweet set-up.

I think I’ve just become accustomed to novelty. I spent a week walking down streets that are unfamiliar, eating food that tastes different, and listening to people who talk funny. Maybe I just want to keep doing and seeing new things. I was talking to Robert (the younger of my two sons) about it as we drove home yesterday, and I asked him what he thought a person from overseas would like to see and do if they came to where we lived. Pretty obviously it’s probably the kinds of things that they can’t see or do where they are from: the novelty of foreign places and people.

So if that’s the case, then maybe the answer for my need for novelty is to start looking for it in my everyday surroundings. I do live in a beautiful state and I should be taking advantage of it — visiting National (and State) Parks, going for hikes, attending cultural events close to home: galleries, concerts, lectures, etc.

Or I could get in the car and go somewhere Right Now. I know I really want to.

Summer Resolutions

The New Year has always struck me as a poor time to make resolutions or goals. For me as an academic, the New Year really starts at the end of August. But August is also a poor time to try to create new good habits; they just get overwhelmed by other things while I try to adjust to incoming students and new schedules. I want to begin creating good habits when I don’t have a lot of other things competing for my attention. So I’ve decided to start making Summer Resolutions to begin when Winter Semester is over (for us at BYU, that’s the end of April). I have some things I want to do this summer to make me into a better person than I am now. I’ve divided them into 4 areas: 1) physical, 2) mental, 3) spiritual, and 4) miscellaneous.

Physical

I’m not in good physical condition. I started running a few years ago, but I haven’t done it regularly enough to really see the long term benefits. I’m running again now, but I need to get serious about it. So I’m resolving to increase my runs over the summer to at least 6 miles at a time. I’m not really interested in training for a marathon or such nonsense (those people are crazy), but I need to exert myself more than I’m doing now. Besides, people tell me that running is fun. I’m looking forward to finding out if that’s true.

Mental

Since I am an academic by profession, this might seem to be the easiest one to accomplish. But I’ve noticed myself becoming intellectually lazy over the past couple of years; I’m not stretching myself to learn new things or to write up things I’ve already learned to share with colleagues at conferences and in publications. My research program has stalled. I have plans but lately no desire to actually do anything about them. That needs to change, and this summer is as good a time as any. Here are a couple of things I want to do:

• Learn Nahuatl. Almost 20 years ago I participated in a Nahuatl reading group. The leader of the reading group was trying out a new Nahuatl textbook and I thought it sounded like fun. The textbook wasn’t that good, and I remember next to nothing about the language. Now I’ve got a better textbook and a summer to work on it.
• Shoshoni Phonology Book. This is the summer when I get serious about writing a book about Shoshoni Phonology. I’ve been thinking about doing it for 15 years now; it’s time to stop thinking about it and start doing it. It will also be a good way to start generating some material to submit to conferences and journals — to get back into the game.

Spiritual

This is private. Suffice it to say that I’ve been on a (pretty low) spiritual plateau for quite a while. I’ve got to move myself off of this plateau to higher ground. This will be a good summer to start.

Miscellaneous

I have a couple of other goals and resolutions for myself this summer that don’t fit neatly into these categories. One involves refurbishing a pump organ I bought two and a half years ago. It works, barely. It will be a long project, and I’ll probably screw it up. But then I’ll fix it and hopefully learn something. I’m not very handy with tools, in spite of having a craftsman for a father. I didn’t pay enough attention to what he was doing while I was growing up, so now I’ll have to learn the hard way. I’m sure Dad will be willing to offer his advice, but it’s my project now.

Even if I don’t accomplish all of my goals or habits, I’m hoping that the process will have some beneficial effects. If nothing else, it will keep me aware of some of my shortcomings (thus inspiring some humility, which I need) and motivate me to be better than I was before.