Reading Life

All I do, these days, it can seem, is read and read and read, and there is this peculiarly satisfying quality of euphoric drunkenness about it. I don't think that it is just because I am reading Thomas's "Doctor Faustus", though it is a very rich elixir, and I cannot stop drinking and drinking more. I am enjoying it, but, in truth, it is rather heavy-going. I do not think that I will be compulsively rereading it again and again like "Magic Mountain". It is one of his more essayistic works, so that one does not truly get lost in this fictional world in the way one does with more ordinary novels. I obviously find the man fascinating, and it seems that I cannot get enough of him, the way he thinks. It's kind of addictive.

Regarding my reading life in general, I regret that I have lost my nighttime reading. You may recall that I had just got turned on, and in a really big way, to the idea of broadening my list of 'rereadables' for this purpose, for my nighttime reading, and now I find that I am probably almost always going to want to stay focused on one book for both the daytime and the evening - resorting to the hardcopy journal for that weary-sleepy time before going to bed. I am still intent on taking up these old books, having now developed an appetite for them, but I am going to have to fit them in between my more serious reading periods, which will probably always take no less that a couple of months. So, maybe my in-between periods will last a couple of months themselves, since I will definitely want to take up a new novel during these times and see if I find another keeper, something that can reshape my mindscape yet again.