Current Reading at the end of 2020, a partial list

As the year comes to an end, and everyone else is posting what they have completed in 2020, I’ll share a dozen (OK, a baker’s dozen) of my current books with a few selected quotes that help explain why I read so many books at once.

1. Christmas Stories by Lucy Maud Montgomery

   Characteristic quote:

   It was the dusk of Christmas Eve and they were all in Jean Lawrence's room at No. 16 Chestnut Terrace. No. 16 was a boarding-house, and boarding-houses are not proverbially cheerful places in which to spend Christmas, but Jean's room, at least, was a pleasant spot, and all the girls had brought their Christmas presents in to show each other.
   *Note: This collection is on the app Serial and the Kindle edition on Amazon is at least similar.

2. Last Seen Wearing an Inspector Morse mystery by Colin Dexter

3. The Wild Robot by Peter Brown

4. My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George

   Characteristic quote:

   A dark enormous form ran onto the meadow. No one was in sight…I had the impression that it was a deer…I ran into the grass. There lay a dead deer.…Someone was poaching.

5. New and Selected Poems by Mary Oliver

   Characteristic quote:

   Sometimes the great bones of my life feel so heavy… “Azure”

6. The House Behind the Cedars by Charles W. Chesnutt

7. Saga, volume 2, by Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples

8. The Border of Paradise by Esme Weijun Wang

9. Murder on Youngers Creek Road by Gary P. West

10. Elsie Dinsmore by Martha Finley

    Characteristic quote:

    "Dear papa, I am so sorry I have been so naughty," she murmured, leaning her head against the arm of his chair, while the tears rolled fast down her cheeks; "won't you please forgive me, papa? it seems to me I can't go to sleep to-night if you are angry with me."

11. The Wangs vs the World by Jade Chang

    Characteristic quote:

    Saina sat behind the wheel of the parked car, a hand-me-down Saab that the house’s previous owner —a widowed theater director who couldn’t take the upstate winters anymore—had left behind along with an attic full of furniture and a shed piled with buckets of unapplied weather sealant.

12. Productions of Mrs. Maria Stewart: Presented to the First African Church and Society of the City of Boston by Maria Stewart

13. Dracula by Bram Stoker

    Characteristic quote:

    Strange and terrible as it is, it is true!

I read a lot of books at once in part because I read for lots of different reasons. I might be working on a project that asks me to review a strangely popular nineteenth century children’s book (#10 above), or I might want to spend half an hour thinking about train tables and an alibi I already know to be faked (#2). I might be reading something with my kids (#3, #4).

But what if I want something else? Well, there’s a poetry collection (#5). There’s a comedic romp that is also a social commentary (#11). And so on.

Some are re-reads, and some I might not finish. I might set one aside and return to it after months or years. I haven’t read So Much Blue by Percival Everett in a sustained way in a long time, and it isn’t on the list above in part because of that, but 2021 could be the year I return to it.

Overwhelm Yourself to Jumpstart Creativity

Setting up life to foster synthesis, putting together ideas and materials in a way that leads to new connections and concepts, will help develop creativity. Considering how things fit together is a kind of exploration. One counterintuitive way to explore and find creative ideas is to deliberately overwhelm yourself with input—specifically the creative output of others.

In my field and graduate school program, studying for comprehensive exams meant spending about a year reading hundreds of books and articles, some from lists of books chosen by others years ago that were barely interesting and others that I selected and had to defend me selection of. I read so much in such a short period of time that I obviously could not fully absorb what I was reading, but my job was to synthesize it and remember it all so that at the end of the study period, I could take three full-day open-book essay exams. I had the maximum number of books checked out from two libraries and stacks of books with post-it notes all over my apartment. They were organized by theme, sort of. I had typed notes and handwritten notes. I would listen to audiobooks if I wasn’t reading. 

I regularly calculated my weekly reading pace and it was never fast enough. I frequently timed my reading pace, calculating how long it would take me to finish a book, and realized I had to skip along. At a certain point, it wouldn’t matter if I read the words, because there wasn’t enough room in my brain to hold it all together. 
It was absolutely ridiculous. 
What this absurd process did, though, racing through stacks of books and complex articles day after day, is create an atmosphere of synthesis. I made connections I would not have made under normal conditions. I had intriguing ideas that came from the juxtaposition of listening to The Scarlet Letter during a lunch break after zipping through not an article on shame, because that would make sense, but a dull tomb of literary criticism from the 1980s that was definitely written in response to another not terribly compelling 1980s piece of literary criticism that I would read two weeks later, when it happened to show up via interlibrary loan. The interesting thing about this whole mess is that I had intriguing ideas at all. 

The good news is that grad school is far from the only way to overwhelm yourself into a state of overwhelmed creativity. More feasible opportunities to invite chaos abound. Here are three:Rather than spending all of your time at a museum in one time period, and rather than trying to wander through wing after wing, pick two disparate exhibits: Go from, say, ancient Egypt to contemporary textiles in just an hour or two. Rather than reading one book at a time, or a couple of books, have a poetry collection, two nonfiction books, a graphic novel, and three novels going at once. Rather than spending the week perfecting one soup idea or trying ten variations of vegetable soup this month, browse recipes promiscuously and let that coconut lime idea into your mushroom toast plans. 

Because it is deliberately, overwhelmingly chaotic, exposing yourself to a wide range of creative content in a condensed time-frame allows you to make unexpected connections and to develop surprising concepts. 
To wrap up, here is the final lesson from grad school: I remember my year of studying for exams as a time of eating hastily and wondering if I had time for a shower. I would take a jog and love it even though I hate jogging. 

That’s the most crucial bit of wisdom. Stop the input. Reflect. 

And take notes: I cannot remember what I realized about The Scarlet Letter, and because it was quirky, idiosyncratic, not useful for any possible comprehensive exam, I failed to write it down. All I remember is the surprise of discovery, which is probably more valuable anyway.

Efficiency vs Savoring Transitions

Efficiency experts tend to ignore transitions. The reality is that one doesn’t toggle instantly from being asleep to being at work, even if work is the kitchen table mere steps away. An efficient good morning looks like this:

1. 5:30 am wake up (efficient people get up really early)

2. 5:31 brush teeth and throw on workout gear (efficient people work out early on the morning)

3. 5:30 (running or yoga)

4. 6:30 (great workout! Showering now)

5. 6:40 (get dressed and have breakfast)

6. 6:50 (hard at work, or at least on your commute and doing something productive)

An actual good morning is literally over an hour of transitions. Getting out of bed. Checking the weather: there are a few raindrops clinging to the window, but it’s not raining now. Making coffee. Staring at the wall wondering about painting it a different color. Reading parts of several newspaper articles. 

This is all significant transition work. One doesn’t simply become awake. One spends some time trying to come to terms with the fact of the day ahead. Getting a grip on reality. 

Even if you’re a morning exerciser who thrives on rushing through this significant transition, there are other transitions throughout a day, and they deserve to be taken seriously, savored, rather than being eliminated in the name of getting things done. 

The transition is the liminal space, the time in between. It is after and before; it is a time of possibility. Things become visible, or nearly so, that would at other times be obscured in the darkness or overwhelmed by the light. Transitions are times to be valued, not eliminated.

The Top Five Reasons not to Call an Agenda-free Meeting

Meetings can be useful and essential and even inspiring. They can also be a tremendous waste of time and energy. Harvard Business Review has a handy calculator that helps determine the cost of a meeting. This calculator addresses time spent and the cost to a business based on how much the attendees are paid.

It’s a good start, but it doesn’t address the annoyance cost of the agenda-free meeting.

1. Meetings are not inherently useful. That means they need to have a purpose.

2. Share that purpose with others. Otherwise, it looks like power tripping because . . .

3. The person who called the meeting inevitably has an agenda.

4. Secret agendas are annoying at best. They can also be threatening.

5. Meetings are not inherently useful, and worse, they can be really inefficient and frustrating. Not telling people why they are coming to a meeting increases your chances of an inefficient and frustrating meeting.

Multiply the length of the meeting by the number of people attending to get a rough estimate of the time cost.

PS Telling people you want to “gather information” with no additional detail is not an agenda, but it’s something.

When Personal Growth Looks Like not Doing Something

I didn’t do something today. It felt personally significant to not do this thing, far more significant than it would have felt to do it. 

Stripping away the tedious details, the process of not doing went something like this:

1. Notice Deadline

I noticed a deadline on my calendar this morning: Today is the last day to submit a project for an upcoming conference. 

2. Reflect

I do not want to go to this conference but thought I should do it anyway. Perhaps something interesting or useful would come of it. 

3. Do (part of) the Thing

I put together a proposal. 

4. Do (more of) the Thing

I filled out an entire online form. 

5. Do Nothing

I did not hit the “submit” button. 

I had some trepidation about this decision. But the fact is that I was only considering this opportunity because I thought that others expected it, or something very like it, from me. 

It has taken me years to be able to not accept this opportunity, to turn my back on this potential achievement that has no appeal to me. I came this close--I even looked up my office phone number, which i can never remember, to enter on the proposal form. 

I escaped, and I didn’t even notice how narrow and significant the escape was until hours later, when my internal calendar alert--more persistent than any electronic device--pinged again, reminding me of the midnight deadline, now mere hours away. 

Saying “no” to something in a culture of achievement is harder than saying “yes” and just doing the work. For me today, that is the point.

I Don’t Have a Personal Brand

I think the reason that I have too many blog ideas is that my personal brand is far from developed. 

Here is my current top five list of reasons that my personal brand is not a thing:

1. The very idea of developing a personal brand seems odd (I realize I’m dating myself here).

2. I have a traditional career of a sort that doesn’t necessarily involve or integrate with the personal brand concept. The aforesaid career takes all of my creative energy. 

3. I have young kids. The aforesaid kids take all of my creative energy. 

4. I fear more commitments, more restrictions on who I am and who I can be. Being a woman is confining enough. Being a mother is confining enough. Being an employee is confining enough. Being a household manager is confining enough. Being an adult, a wife, a teacher, a committee member on the infinite committees of the bureaucracy that is life is confining enough. Being a responsible person is The Worst. I don’t think being a self serving jerk would do the trick either, but if I decide to embrace that route, I’ll Tweet the journey.

5. I’m not a photographer. I’m pretty sure cultivating a personal brand requires professional photography. 

*My poor thumb typing (I’m composing on my phone) plus autocorrect has resulted in “confusing” and “condoning” rather than confining several times. The best result: “being a mother is confusing enough.” True.