Day 92. Some Sweet Day (2/4/19)

I feel guilty.

I feel guilty that I don't read more, that I don't read as much as I should. I may have mentioned this before.

I feel guilty that I read the 'wrong' things when I was younger. I feel I should have been reading Tale Of Two Cities when I was reading Joe Haldeman's The Forever War, should have been reading Crime and Punishment when I was reading Larry Niven's The Mote In God's Eye, War and Peace when I was reading Marvel's Werewolf By Night (which was genuinely really rather good, even if the titular werewolf's name when in human form was Jack Russell, an idea I found to be a bit crap even when I was eleven.)

It's not just the novels. I feel guilty that I have comics I haven't read. I have bound volumes of Dave Sim's 'Cerebus The Aardvaark' that I bought when we lived in Leeds and haven't read yet. We left Leeds in 1994. Some nights, while I'm playing FIFA (currently somewhere in 2021, top of the league, still in Europe, Timo Werner and Nabil Fekir cutting it up a storm in L4), I think "really could be reading Cerebus here."

(Look, it's really good. It started as a satire of Conan the Barbarian and developed into the idea that the author would tell the story of the character for 300 issues ending in his death, alone and unloved. The character that is, not the author. And he did it. Followed through the plan, wrote 33 years of the same comic, killed the character off and walked away. The chance of this making a multiplex near you are slim.)

It's not the TV that's doing it. Though I can't read while the TV is on. I could easily remove myself from the room.

It's definitely twitter. It's too easy to read short bursts of nonsense rather than paragraphs of rhapsodic prose. It's also music magazines. Endless Uncuts, Mojos, Qs, Empires, all digested. Novels, left alone.

It's choice. Possibly the wrong choices. If there's any such thing as a wrong choice. Surely it's just the choice we make? We have no way of knowing whether it was right or not.

When I put my mind to it, I can manage it.

I read all of Matthew Weiner's 'Heather, The Totality' in one evening. It's a slim volume. Went through all of Tom King's Mister Miracle run collected in one book in a week or so, chapter by chapter.

And then I lose the momentum.

I'm currently reading the following:

Jeff Goulding's Stanley Park Story - 50 years of Merseyside derbies told through the eyes of two families.

Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint - the legendary debut by Roth wherein he scandalises polite literature with a litany of issues that the title character has with sex. Like most of Roth's characters in fairness.

Stephen Hawking's Brief Answers to Big Questions - starts with 'Does God Exist' and works its way up from there. Haven't picked it up since the end of January.

The collected Judge Dredd volume 1. About ten stories in. The stories are only 5 pages long, it's not like that's demanding.

All the above - the struggle is picking the thing up.

It's easier to scroll twitter, flick through channels.

Swear to god, tonight I'm reading. Once I've done this. And figured out what Theresa bloody may has done this time. And watched Fleabag and Partridge and the brand new Line of Duty.

Once that's all out of the way, swear to god, I'm reading.

This, this is one down.

(Soundtrack: The Bluebells 'Exile On Twee Street' again. Because yo can't have enough Bluebells demos in your life.)