A hotel courtyard
A great place to read
Monday, November, 24, 2025
There’s a lot to talk about, but I’m doing none of that.
I saw a thing on Facebook that said the Icelandic tradition is to give people books on Christmas Eve and then spend the night reading them and drinking hot chocolate.
It sounded like something an old friend of mine would like. I sent it to her and we corresponded about the subtle quiet beauty of it.
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about reading. I don’t do it as much as I used to. Or rather I spend more time reading brief bits on Facebook, which isn’t the same as reading a book. My friend now reads mostly on an iPad. I tried a reading device, the Nook. It was hard to hold and I gave up. Besides there’s something neat about the feel of a book, but you can’t look up words you aren’t sure of, and you can’t search for a quote within the pdf and you can’t enlarge the type. So books have disadvantages. But you don’t have to boot them up or recharge them, just open them.
As a kid I was thought to be a bad reader because I never knew what Dick and Jane were doing. That’s because I thought the Dick and Jane stories were stupid and I never read them. I wish I had had the guts to tell my first and second grade teachers that! But it led my mother to have me read Richard Halliburton’s Book of Marvels out loud. And that led me to later in life getting out in the world to see ancient places. So all in all, I’d say it worked out.
But I’ve often thought about books I’ve read and those I tried and stopped.
Moby Dick – tried twice. Got a good ways through it the second time and stopped. No particular reason. I think I couldn’t find where I last left it.
War and Peace – I got through the first chapter or so, up to where he’s wrestling the bear and I put it down – no reason.
Ulysses – Okay. There are those who think this is the greatest novel ever written and those who say “WTF?” I’m in the later group. I tried twice.The milk maid, the German gobbledegook, the endless footnotes explaining how clever Joyce is. Yeah. Ok. Tried twice. Gotta go.
The scariest book I ever read – Dracula. I kept my back to the wall the whole time. Four days 400 some pages in fine print (The Modern Classic edition). It’s written in epistolary style, That means it’s a series of letters, and reports. This allowed Bram Stoker to change narrators as he needed to. I found myself yelling (well, thinking of yelling because I was reading) “Why don’t you look three pages before?! Kind of like the kid in the theater yelling, “Watch out!” as the headless an comes up behind the pretty girl in the cave where everyone says, “Don’t go alone.” Naturally, she goes alone. (I don’t know what happened in that movie I ran out of the room.)
This led me to try reading:
Frankenstein – I couldn’t get into it. Skipped to the end and read the last sentence – something about a raft. Ho hum.
Heart of Darkness – It’s not long. Francis Ford Coppola based his epic movie Apocalypse Now on the book. Loved the movie – couldn’t get into the book.
The best book I’ve ever read? And reread – The Great Gatsby.
I read it in 7th grade and didn’t get any of the subtlety or nuance. I’ve read it since then and read reviews of it and now I see what a masterwork it is.
One of the toughest books to read
Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco. He pissed me off in the first 100 pages listing lots of phyla of clamshells and such. I was so mad I got a dictionary and looked up every stupid word I didn’t know. (Internet? There was no stinkin’ internet.) But then he got rolling, with numbers and dates and calendar changes and thoughts this guy was having waiting in a church at night. I wonder if Richard Halliburton had such thoughts when he hid from the guards and had the night to himself inside Hagia Sophia? I also wondered if he found the bathroom!
Surprisingly, to me, Eco never explained what a Foucault Pendulum was. But when the book ended I was – i dunno – surprised? Tired? Bewildered? Why did he stop? It was so good. It’s the only time I remember looking up from the end of a book and wishing it would go on and on.
Another book I gave up on was Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Verne did the “name the fish phyla” trick that Umberto did, but I wasn’t having it. Said “Screw it” and put the book down.
Steinbeck – I think I’ve read every one of his books. The worst was East of Eden. I think I was too young to appreciate it. The rest? Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row – I loved.
I’ve been reading The Myth of the Renaissance by Ada Palmer. Great book. I’ve put it down because of more pressing reading but I hope to get back to it.
Books I’ve read in the last year or six months:
On the Edge – Nate Silver. Besides being the statistical modeler behind 528.com he’s a world ranked poker player. This book describes gamblers and gambling. How they find an edge to let them win.
Lorne – Susan Morrison. If you’ve watched Saturday Night Love from the beginning. This is a must.
Who Knew – Barry Diller. His life and how he ran ABC, Paramount, Ticketron, Fox and much more. He doesn’t pull punches. Fascinating.
I took a Great Courses “Great Literature” course and the speaker said great books should be hard. He could have said “may be hard” and he argued they should be. Something about the struggle makes them more worthwhile. Me? Eh? I don’t know. Some books are hard (Crime and Punishment) but worth the struggle. Others are not (David Copperfield).
But others roll along in a pleasing sort of way. (Anything by Larry McMurtry – but why couldn’t he used punctuation?)
