Some further notes about my reading, as none of my other ideas have been coming through

It's Monday night as I write, and my husband is in bed because he's sick. I suppose you've noticed already that it is very important to me to identify when it is I am writing whatever it is I am writing.  I prefer to schedule these posts a day or two in advance, and when I do, I try to adjust the tenses I use based on when the material is going to be published. For instance, in my journal I may say that "so-in-so happened this morning," but if I prepare the same material for the blog, to be published the following week, I'll changed it to "so-in-so happened last week."

Today I've been reading Ian Watt in my anthology, and as much Annie Dillard literary criticism as I can absorb. I've also been trying to make way in The Brothers Karamazov, a book I began well before I took on this seminar paper project. I think I've decided I'll feel better of I finish it before moving forward in The Living. Sometimes it is hard for me to know if I am doing things in good order or not. I'm at a point in The Brothers Karamazov that is really giving me trouble, at a point where one might expect the narrative to pick up, the point where Dmitri Karmazov is guilty of murder. Honestly I don't understand his motivation. I don't understand why he would be moved to rapture at the idea that the object of his affection loved him for a single hour at the hight of their original spree. I'm actually having a hard time making out what is going on at all, but I know an investigation is about to begin because I've been looking at the section titles. I'm right around half-way through. The Brothers Karamazov is a novel anyway, so reading it isn't quite a waste of precious study time, even if catching on Warehouse 13 online possibly is.

I was at a similar point in The Living when I broke away from it, where one major section had ended and a second had begun, and I was having trouble getting acclimated to what is apparently a different set of primary characters. This is one of the reasons I didn't use to enjoy short stories. You have to acclimate quickly in a short story, and that process often takes me a little bit of time. At the same time I will tend to skip the first two chapters of any Stephen King novel in order to jump-start the very same process of acclimation.

Part of the problem I have with my reading is that I am impulsive. I watch more than one television show at once, I argue, and when I was in college I had to read at least two or three different works simultaneously at any given time, so why should my personal reading be any different? In fact my personal reading isn't any different. This is one of the reasons I need to begin to force myself to slow down.  I say begin because I never quite reach that point of making a beginning.