In December, several of my old study mates posted how many books they'd read in 2014. Most of them apparently had set some sort of goal for themselves, which usually lay somewhere between 100 and 150. One extreme outlier wanted to read 300 books, but 'only' got to about 260.
Imagine reading 260 books in a year! That's almost 1 a day! I've had to implement some contemporary-classics shift to accommodate all the books I want to read, but with 260 books you wouldn't need any of that, you could just read everything and anything you wanted.
Now 300 or even 100 books in a year is never going to happen with my job and otherwise quite busy life, but I also decided to set some sort of goal for myself, because I do want to read more (I want to do lots of things more, like playing the piano and Postcrossing and writing, but reading is one of those things you can do in otherwise unused moments, such as on a train with a crappy wifi connection, which makes it easier to fit in).
So I set myself the goal of 52 books, or 1 book a week. This, I felt, was pretty reasonable, surely I would manage to read one book a week. I've called this my '52 book challenge', because it does feel like a challenge some times. I've been going at it for 8 weeks (today is the first day of week 9) and I feel like I've been doing pretty well.
Let's see what I've read so far this year (not counting Crime & Punishment, which I finished this year but didn't start):
1 The Children Act - Ian McEwan
2 My Brief History - Stephen Hawking
3 All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
4 Number9dream - David Mitchell
5 The Lost World - Michael Crichton
6 The Rosie Effect - Graeme Simsion
Okay, so maybe the contemporary-classic system is not working as flawlessly as I would have liked. And also, I am 2 books behind. But really, that's nothing, in a good holiday week I can read 6 or 7 books in total, so I will make up for that at some point. Also, I have some nice thin books stacked up which will take me about a day to finish and will quickly get me back on schedule. For now, the biggest challenge is deciding what I'm going to read next, as I finished The Rosie Effect this morning and have several contenders for my next read.
I will try to keep you updated on my reading progress, success and/or failure, and if you have any recommendations as to what I should definitely read this year, tell me!
Monday 23 February 2015
Sunday 22 February 2015
Piano update
So a while back I posted about my piano revival; after 10 years of not playing, mainly due to lack of an actual piano, I decided to buy a digital piano and start to play again. My idea was to play as often as possible, but at least either a) 3 hours a week or b) 10 minutes after dinner every day. Unsurprisingly, this did not happen.
With our living room stuffed full of books as it is, the piano is hidden away in a room upstairs, a room that generally does not have the heating on. So if I want to play for more than 5 minutes and/or without freezing hands, I have to turn the heating on at least half an hour in advance. This kind of planning is not something my rare impromptu moments of playing are very well adapted to. Added to that, the piano is living up to its cheap nature; some of the keys make this awful 'woink' sound when you release them, so playing without headphones on is no fun, and playing with headphones one is also no fun because you want to hear the sound reverberate in the air. Also, it really does take a lot of energy, and an hour of playing still leaves me quite drained, both physically and mentally. But all that are just excuses for not playing as much as I actually could, or want to.
Because I still really love to play. I've been working through my old books chronologically, and am now in a position that I can actually play some of the more difficult and longer pieces in one go on the first retry. Some of my old favourites are completely back up to scratch and I use those as a reward when I get stuck in one of the more difficult ones. However, because I play so irregularly, my fingers still really really hurt when I try to do the more difficult things that involve lots of fast or repetitious moves. So after an hour, I do have to call it quits, even though I may just be warming up into something difficult. And then it may be more than a week before I find (or rather: make) time to play again.
I measure my progress against my ability to play Comptine d'un Autre Ete, which was the reason I originally started playing again. I would have thought I would be halfway decent on that song by now, given that I try to play it every time. But there is no way I will be playing it in its entirety for the next half year or so; today I finally managed to play the first eight bars correctly, without mistakes, and in the slowest speed ever.
The thing may be that on some of the older songs, my fingers still somehow 'remember' the moves, especially the difficult ones because I practised them so often. And with this new song, I have to learn all these tricks all over again, its not a question of repeating what I already could do once. So my progress is nowhere near as fast as I'd hoped, and that can be a bit hard, but I'm still hanging in there. Working towards this goal is a good thing, even though it is taking me really long and it is sometimes hard to stay motivated.
But I've promised myself that when I can actually play it, and still like playing, I may reward myself with a better (digital) piano. And maybe even lessons. Which I shouldn't have quit in the first place, but that decision is 10 years in the past, so best to focus on what I can still salvage today!
With our living room stuffed full of books as it is, the piano is hidden away in a room upstairs, a room that generally does not have the heating on. So if I want to play for more than 5 minutes and/or without freezing hands, I have to turn the heating on at least half an hour in advance. This kind of planning is not something my rare impromptu moments of playing are very well adapted to. Added to that, the piano is living up to its cheap nature; some of the keys make this awful 'woink' sound when you release them, so playing without headphones on is no fun, and playing with headphones one is also no fun because you want to hear the sound reverberate in the air. Also, it really does take a lot of energy, and an hour of playing still leaves me quite drained, both physically and mentally. But all that are just excuses for not playing as much as I actually could, or want to.
Because I still really love to play. I've been working through my old books chronologically, and am now in a position that I can actually play some of the more difficult and longer pieces in one go on the first retry. Some of my old favourites are completely back up to scratch and I use those as a reward when I get stuck in one of the more difficult ones. However, because I play so irregularly, my fingers still really really hurt when I try to do the more difficult things that involve lots of fast or repetitious moves. So after an hour, I do have to call it quits, even though I may just be warming up into something difficult. And then it may be more than a week before I find (or rather: make) time to play again.
I measure my progress against my ability to play Comptine d'un Autre Ete, which was the reason I originally started playing again. I would have thought I would be halfway decent on that song by now, given that I try to play it every time. But there is no way I will be playing it in its entirety for the next half year or so; today I finally managed to play the first eight bars correctly, without mistakes, and in the slowest speed ever.
The thing may be that on some of the older songs, my fingers still somehow 'remember' the moves, especially the difficult ones because I practised them so often. And with this new song, I have to learn all these tricks all over again, its not a question of repeating what I already could do once. So my progress is nowhere near as fast as I'd hoped, and that can be a bit hard, but I'm still hanging in there. Working towards this goal is a good thing, even though it is taking me really long and it is sometimes hard to stay motivated.
But I've promised myself that when I can actually play it, and still like playing, I may reward myself with a better (digital) piano. And maybe even lessons. Which I shouldn't have quit in the first place, but that decision is 10 years in the past, so best to focus on what I can still salvage today!
Wednesday 4 February 2015
The Lost Words
Many of you will know the Jurassic Park and Lost World films, but did you know that these movies are actually based on books? Neither did I, until about last October, when I was checking IMDB because of the new Jurassic World film and got stuck in a Wikipedia loop.
Now I wouldn't normally read novels in the 'techno-thriller' genre, not because I think I am above them, but because I have limited reading time and I'd like to spend that time on something really good (or at least worthwhile). Also, Michael Crichton wasn't very high on my 'to read' list. But sometimes, this kind of novel can be really nice to read, for example during a very long flight, or the many train journeys I've been taking for my job lately. Which is how I've read Jurassic Park while in Australia, and am currently reading The Lost World, the sequel.
I came to these novels expecting them to be like the films, at least in plot and characters, if not in setting and atmosphere. But funnily enough, it is exactly the other way around. The novels are very fast-paced and can leave me with my heart in my throat for minutes after I've put them down. The settings are also eerily similar; you know about as much of the surroundings as the characters in the story, and the descriptions are pretty vivid and graphic.
But that's where the similarities end. The plot lines, for example, are completely different. With The Lost World, the only thing that is really similar, is that there is this 'Site B' on Isla Sorna. And that Ian Malcolm visits it, at some point during the novel. All the other things, from the reason why to the people he meets there to the dinosaurs, are all completely different. Same goes for Jurassic Park; Spielberg took the basic premise of the amusement-park-with-dinos and turned that into a whole different thing. Interestingly, in the third Jurassic Park movie, the opening sequence is the same as the opening sequence in the first novel. So sometimes he does adhere to the story, only not in places where you'd expect it.
Does this mean the novels are weak compared to the films? You might think so, because Spielberg made up a lot on the side. The truth is, the novels have a very different angle; very scientific, and pretty philosophical. Ian Malcolm, much more the central character than Alan Grant, proposes his chaos theory and through that predicts most of the things that go wrong in the park. Added to that, the whole premise that genetic research and revitalisation of dinosaurs can only be profitable if they are put into an amusement park, instead of just studied on their own, stands out much more clearly in the novels. It is basically a critique of human intervention on nature, combined with a philosophical exploration of the connection between science and amusement. If that sounds pretty literary to you, that is because it is; apart from the scary thriller bits with the slashing dinosaurs, there is quite a lot of talking and philosophising going on. In some ways it reminded me of Life of Pi, which also explores the connection between wild animals in captivity and humans.
So if you find yourself in need of some dino entertainment while we wait for Jurassic World, why not try the novels? And if you can't be bothered about the whole Jurassic Park craze, maybe the novels are just the thing for you!
Now I wouldn't normally read novels in the 'techno-thriller' genre, not because I think I am above them, but because I have limited reading time and I'd like to spend that time on something really good (or at least worthwhile). Also, Michael Crichton wasn't very high on my 'to read' list. But sometimes, this kind of novel can be really nice to read, for example during a very long flight, or the many train journeys I've been taking for my job lately. Which is how I've read Jurassic Park while in Australia, and am currently reading The Lost World, the sequel.
I came to these novels expecting them to be like the films, at least in plot and characters, if not in setting and atmosphere. But funnily enough, it is exactly the other way around. The novels are very fast-paced and can leave me with my heart in my throat for minutes after I've put them down. The settings are also eerily similar; you know about as much of the surroundings as the characters in the story, and the descriptions are pretty vivid and graphic.
But that's where the similarities end. The plot lines, for example, are completely different. With The Lost World, the only thing that is really similar, is that there is this 'Site B' on Isla Sorna. And that Ian Malcolm visits it, at some point during the novel. All the other things, from the reason why to the people he meets there to the dinosaurs, are all completely different. Same goes for Jurassic Park; Spielberg took the basic premise of the amusement-park-with-dinos and turned that into a whole different thing. Interestingly, in the third Jurassic Park movie, the opening sequence is the same as the opening sequence in the first novel. So sometimes he does adhere to the story, only not in places where you'd expect it.
Does this mean the novels are weak compared to the films? You might think so, because Spielberg made up a lot on the side. The truth is, the novels have a very different angle; very scientific, and pretty philosophical. Ian Malcolm, much more the central character than Alan Grant, proposes his chaos theory and through that predicts most of the things that go wrong in the park. Added to that, the whole premise that genetic research and revitalisation of dinosaurs can only be profitable if they are put into an amusement park, instead of just studied on their own, stands out much more clearly in the novels. It is basically a critique of human intervention on nature, combined with a philosophical exploration of the connection between science and amusement. If that sounds pretty literary to you, that is because it is; apart from the scary thriller bits with the slashing dinosaurs, there is quite a lot of talking and philosophising going on. In some ways it reminded me of Life of Pi, which also explores the connection between wild animals in captivity and humans.
So if you find yourself in need of some dino entertainment while we wait for Jurassic World, why not try the novels? And if you can't be bothered about the whole Jurassic Park craze, maybe the novels are just the thing for you!
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