Great to hear Nam Le’s debut collection of short stories The Boat, named 2009 winner of the Prime Minister’s award for fiction. While I’ve not found the brain space for much blogging of late, I have been squeezing in reading around the edges of my working life and recently read The Boat, and was bowled over by Le’s vivid and assured prose and the audacious scope of his storytelling. From Columbian assassins, to coastal Victoria through to Hiroshima just before the bomb, I was moved and convinced by all Le had to offer.

I always figured my propensity for constant e-procrastination was a sure sign that I was not cut out to be a writer; happily I was mistaken:

http://meanjin.com.au/spike-the-meanjin-blog/post/spike-comp-the-daily-grind/

Mangled language

Just when I thought Team Plain English was starting to gain the upper hand, I endured this in a “strategic partnerships” meeting today:

“Lets leave the exact nature of the “Programmatic specificity” aside for now, and focus our attention on idenitfying the “low-hanging fruit”  and “program synergies” that are avaliable to us in “resetting the policy relationship”.

I was so disgusted with myself for having understood everything that was meant by that statement, that I wanted to  throw myself on the boardroom table shrieking, “what have I become!” until hoarse. Of course my inability to pay my rent if my ‘outputs were redistrubted more efficiently’ ultimately stopped me.

Rut busting & routines

My silence over here of late is one of the many negative impacts my new job is currently having on my life. I’ve wanted to write and read and explore the multiplicity of reading lives people are living and documenting on the web, however all the gentle moments of life have been swallowed whole by the demands of the my job. Long hours, weeks on end of travel and emotionally charged environments have left my concentration scatty, my energy levels unpredictable, and my general persons highly irritable. I can’t seem to get through more than couple of pages at a time without my mind drifting away and forgetting what I’ve just read or my hypersensitive mood getting the better of me and finding some kind of (lets face it, largely imaginary) irritating fault with some aspect of the book which results in me discarding my book in favour of some other diversionary activity.

This is rather new territory for me, as I’ve never had a time in my life where reading couldn’t soothe or at least provide respite from my troubles. Having said that, this is the first job that I’ve ever had in which everyday is a race against the clock from the minute you arrive in the building to the time you fall in a heap of exhaustion at the end of the day. I’ve never experienced such a level of frenetic activity that doesn’t allow for even a few snatches stillness, it’s just a constantly rolling swell of crisis after crisis and tasks that need to get done yesterday.  It really exposes how easily I am knocked off kilter by a work storm, and how little I guard against my public and private lives  melding into one undistinguished mass. A fact which is no doubt reflected in the inconsistent nature of my blog.

It’s clear that I’m going to need to start being far more selfish with time and stop feeling guilty about saying no to work in favour of those things in my life that are personally enriching. So towards this, the first thing I’ve decided to do is to create a reading routine. I’m not really sure how one goes about this, so I’ve decided to start small and focus on consistent steps. I’ve always been taught that goals need to be specfic and measurable; so to this end I’m going to start by aiming for 20 minutes of reading a day, reading only one book at a time so as to guard against becoming overwhelmed. I also think I need a challenge or long time goal to focus what little attention I have at the moment and build the consistent momentum I need. Maybe a one of the many awesome challenges being hosted out there?  Or perhaps a reading list?  I’m currently intrigued by the Ulysses reading challenge that dovegreyreader is hosting as I’ve always wanted to get conquer my fear of Joyce. I hope I’m not too late to sign up.

Anybody have any tips on reading routines or breaking out of a reading ruts?

Bits, or perhaps bytes?

I’ve got several reviews backed up but I need to carve out something that vaguely resembles spare time, in order to get around to posting them. So for today all I can offer is a few cools links I’ve stumbled across recently.

First off check out this rather interesting article I stumbled across whilst procrastinating at work. The article takes the p.o.v of both a (fictious) publisher and a librarian, and discusses some experiences and issues of the both these book centred professions.

Also, I noticed that The Monthly Magazine has put up a great video of Alain de Botton talking about the pleasures and sorrows of work – go check it out, or if you’ve read the book, tell me what you thought?

 Lastly, and due to access issues this will be directed mostly towards Aussie readers, has anyone read Steve Carroll’s The Lost Life yet? I’m super intrigued and am wondering what others think.