I should have made a more concerted effort to figure out the names and locations of the different canals that cut across Venice, connecting the Grand Canal to the open ocean, but at the time it was probably enough that I didn't fall into the water.
As is well-documented, I like to assign myself challenges or tasks, such as writing on faith for an entire year or reading/commenting on Remembrance of Things Past every day. I guess this falls into that category. Recently Janet and I were on a drive down to see her mom and we were talking about books (hardly a surprise). We had stopped by Northshire Books in Manchester, which is by far the best bookstore in Vermont (and, thus, we spend way too much money there). We were discussing how much we love reading and how sad it is that my students simply don't like to read at all, which led to a discussion about how little Americans actually read. A quick internet search showed that it was much worse than Janet imagined (although not worse than I imagined - she teaches graduate students in creative writing and I teach undergraduate game design students, so you could have seen that coming). Anyway, as of 2023, 46% of Americans didn't manage to finish reading or listening to even one book in the course of a year. At the far end of the spectrum a little more than ten percent of Americans read twenty of more books in a year. Both figures are, in a sense, shocking, but it made me wonder how many books I actually read in the course of a year. So, I decided to count this year. I'm actually hesitant to do this, mainly because I don't want to quantify or commodify something that I truly love, but it sounded like an interesting experiment. A couple codicils: I'm not going to include books that I'm currently rereading/studying for class (such as when I looked over Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment for my Nature of Evil class in the fall semester, unless it's an entirely new book that I'm using for class (I can't think of what would fall into that category right now). I am going to include any Great Courses that I'm listening to on Audible, which may be cheating but some of them are quite lengthy and the vast majority of them are fascinating, difficult, and thought-provoking. I made a point to my friend Debi the other day that I'd have a much bigger list if I didn't read/reread so many books that are eight-hundred pages. This earned me the appropriate eye roll emoticon, although I think it's still a good point. I just finished a reread of Dickens's David Copperfield in December, which seemed like the appropriate experience for my unsuccessful drive to see my Dad before he passed. Plus, I read a massive biography of Proust in the fall. My hypothesis is that I'd crawl into that category of twenty of more books, but probably not by a mile.
With that in mind, the first book that I've read in 2025 is Stephanie LaCava's I Fear My Pain Interests You. It's one of the books that I picked up at our last stop by Northshire Books. I started it on New Year's Day and finished it yesterday, which speaks to how engaging it was. It may be worth is just for this line: "He wouldn't know where to find me when he didn't come back." That may sum up the entire novel. Highly recommended.
Finally, one of my goals for this year (and I have many) is to read a lot more. As I've pointed out previously, years ago, when I first made my way through Remembrance of Things Past, I was hoping to rewire my brain, to slow everything down, and I think it definitely helped. It's one of the reasons why I eventually dropped off of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram (even before they became right wing hellscapes). Maybe this decision to read a lot more is part of the same vision, although it also has a very Fernando Pessoa-esque desire to separate out myself from the horrible, callous, hate-filled world that we are forced to suffer through.
