A Reader's Dilemma

I just finished the very good and interesting, but also very long, book The Wizard of the Crow (750+ pages) and of course now I’m looking for the next book to read. I got my copy of Sacred Games and of course I want to read that next but it’s 900 pages. I’ve always been in the habit of sort-of cleansing my palate in between big or tough books with a short paperback, usually some science fiction that won’t tax my mind. It’s a weird practice, but I went through a phase where I read the last page of everything I read first so I’m used to my eccentricities. The rub comes with my 2007 goal of doing an autodidact literature “class” for myself by using my website Unreads.com to deeply read and really study a bunch of classics. I listened to a couple of audio courses from The Learning Company (everything they have by Arnold Weinstein, my new personal learning guru, and Books That Have Made History) and bought a bunch of the books. Those courses were an incredibly enlightening experience I’ll post on more later, they’re very much recommended. So I’ve painted myself into a corner by wanting to cleanse my palate but also not wanting to waste any reading time with fluff. My compromise is that I brought my collection of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays to get in some of my “studying” without having to commit to a whole book while Sacred Games is beckoning to me. Being a reader is fraught with problems, I tell you. :)

[tags]reading,books,sacred+games,the+learning+company,literature[/tags]