Since my last post, I've gotten almost nowhere with my reading, even though I set myself very unambitious goals for the month's start. I'm now only 35 pages into David Lodge's Deaf Sentence, which I planned to be long done with by now. Having begun my challenge at page 60/141 of A Man of the People, that puts me at 81+35 = 116 pages read so far, when I should be at page 645. And I need to reach page 900 by Thursday.
Let me say this. There is no way I'm reaching page 900 by Thursday.
How did I get here? It's hard to say. Finals haven't even been that tough.
I finished A Man of The People two Sundays ago, as planned, reading about Odili's trials, tribulations and their miraculous resolution.
After pursuing Nanga's fiancée, Odili manages to offend just about everyone involved, sees one of his best friends killed, and gets beaten near to death by an angry mob. Then he awakes in a hospital, learns the country is in the midst of a military coup that has deposed Nanga and the regime he is a part of, and finds Edna - the fiancée in question - by his bedside. They decide to marry. So Odili gets the girl and lives happily ever after!
After that great read, I immediately dove into Deaf Sentence, featuring a retired linguistics professor, Desmond Bates, who is rather deaf. It's a hilarious read that's done a great job of building my empathy for the hard of hearing.
I've had plenty of time to read Deaf Sentence, as my biggest final (Analysis of Algorithms) was last Thursday. Now I only have assignments for my journalism classes, which aren't even graded. And yet - and yet! - I've gotten nowhere.
Here's the problem. Deaf Sentence is so good and thoughtfully written that I simply must read every word of it with care and attention. I can't enforce any kind of rigorous reading rhythm. I'll measure my exact pace tonight, but if I had to estimate, I'd give it a snail's pace of 10-15 pages an hour.
Still, that doesn't explain why I was unable to give any more than a measly 3 hours of my time to reading during a relatively light finals week. That, sadly, comes down to my time-wasting habits. I spent hours last week watching YouTube videos and mindlessly surfing the internet. My history is a ruined battlefield where laziness has thoroughly won the day.
If I only could channel this procrastinatory fervor into reading, I might actually get somewhere.
Anyways, new game plan. I'll try to reach page 450 by Thursday - half of my initially stated goal, which I at least can feel moderately good about. Then, break begins, and with it the first really challenging stretch: to reach page 2,100 by December 22. Instead of my initial goal of reading 1,200 pages that week, I'll have to read 1,650, or 230 a day. It'll be tough, but it'll get me closer to next week's breakneck 340 pages a day.
The idea of increasing my reading rate so rapidly mid-month may actually be a smart strategy. I can anticipate a plateau coming up, and it would be good to reach it sooner than later. Then I can address whatever is holding me back at that point and have a better chance of accomplishing my real goal for the month: to read 600 pages a day for three straight days.
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