At the moment I am successfully avoiding reading my next novel (Proust - even
I am amazed at how long I have managed to put off starting it) by buying today the latest available issues of the magazines,
New Scientist (a special edition on getting "off the grid") and
Philosophy Now (whose main focus this time is Simone de Beauvoir). Does that qualify as "non-fiction", even if they don't qualify as ebooks? Neither of them are "browse" material for me, in that I read them cover to cover, so...?
Why am I reading them? Well, aside from the possibly subconscious desire to procrastinate on Proust, coupled with the contradictory notion that starting in on something lighter might ease me back into steady reading again (and therefore kill the procrastination), there is also the desire:
- with New Scientist to gain a reasonable review of the latest science news, as opposed to the sensationalist and usually only barely or not-at-all accurate "THEY CAN GROW HUMAN EARS ON RATS!"-style of reporting generally received from most major "news" sources, and
- with Philosophy Now to experience rather often that disconcerting notion whereby someone rather accepted to be quite brilliant, if not genius, says something - about knowledge or the human condition or consciousness - in perfect and perfectly succinct English, and yet my brain reacts with "Wait...What?", and continues to do so over several successive readings, thus reminding me of the rather massive and perplexing dark blotch of absent knowledge and even absenter "wisdom" inside my head that I play a small penlight over by pretending that data is an adequate substitute.
That is, I'm still just that irritating little three-year-old kid pulling on mum's dress and asking with a steady whine, "Yeah, but WHY?".
Cheers,
Marc (I guess I could read
Cultural Amnesia again, this time on the Iliad since I bought it again in ebook form?)