I have been thinking about how I read these days. (This is sort of a rehash of an earlier post, The Novel Channel, and for a while I decided not to add to it, but I kept thinking about it, and that post was over ten years ago, so...)
I like to read several books at one time. More often than not I get pushback from folks when I tell them this, but to me it's as natural as listening to different styles of music over the course of a day. My brain is receptive to different kinds of writing at different times of the day. First thing in the morning, over that first lovely cup of coffee, I like to read things that challenge me, more difficult and/or experimental books that I might not have the inclination for later in the day when I'm more tired or impatient. So, books like Finnegans Wake, Miss Macintosh My Darling, or The Anatomy of Melancholy are ideal for this. Poetry can work for this as well. Right now I am plowing, very slowly, through Gertrude Stein's The Making of Americans. It's slow going, and I find that about ten pages at a sitting is enough, enough to get through the first cup of coffee anyway. But it's stimulating (the prose, not the coffee, although of course that's stimulating too in its own way!), and it wakes me up. I usually return to Stein later in the evening for another ten pages.
For the last few years I have been working my way through all of the Arden Shakespeares (both the second and third series, not the first). I read all of Shakespeare a long time ago, but I really like the Ardens for their scholarship and overall presentation. I am nearing the end of this project, with only four or five plays left to read. The way I do it is first I read through all the critical apparatus that comes with the play, starting with the introduction and the appendices; I especially enjoy all the textual analysis, all the minutiae about the Folio, any quartos, details about editing, etc. Then I read through all the notes and glosses, paying special attention to any notes about textual cruxes or indications of staging. I do all this ahead of time so I can enjoy reading the play straight through without getting too distracted by the notes.
Sometimes I will just read the play out loud to myself, but usually for this pass through I like to read along with a recording of the play (the key aspect being reading along, not just listening; reading = eyes on the page). For the recordings, I read with either the Argo Classics (recorded primarily in the 1950s) or the Arkangel series from the 1990s. Sometimes the Argo readings can be a bit fusty, and overall I prefer the Arkangel (with some serious caveats, like: why have Hortensio stutter in The Taming of the Shrew?). I like doing this because it really helps to get an approach to phrasing, delivery, and dramatic effect, even though I acknowledge that those interpretations are only one way to speak these lines, and definitely not the only way or the definitive way. The next time I read through all of Shakespeare, I'll just read it all without the recordings and see how that goes. And yeah, I plan on pretty much rereading Shakespeare for the rest of my life.
So, in addition to my morning read and Shakespeare, I do like to have a story going, a narrative of some sort, usually a novel. Sometimes comics can scratch this itch, but usually it's prose fiction of some sort, and novels are it for me. This is all pretty fluid, and if the novel is compelling enough it can overtake all my other reading paths until it's done. This always happens to me with Pynchon novels and with Malazan books. Coming up over the next year: Alexandre Dumas' D'Artagnan Romances, Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet, Ovid, Boccaccio, more Elmore Leonard, rereading Homer and Pynchon (especially Against the Day), and much more!
I also like to have some kind of big reference book of some sort to dip into without worrying too much about continuity. Right now it's Garner's Modern American Usage (2nd ed.), which is ideal for this stream. And finally, I usually have some kind of music-related reading going on. Often this is satisfied by web writing, reviews, Point of Departure, Hoffman music boards, Substack, etc., and also by my stash of printouts, liner notes, articles, things I've accumulated over the years (my "vertical files"). Right now I am focused on going through all my Sun Ra files, including printouts of correspondence from the now defunct (and sadly unarchived) Saturn listserv. After that I'm going to continue with Ra by rereading Szwed and Youngquist.
So that's basically it: the texture of my reading these days. At bedtime, I like to read dry scholarly stuff to get good and sleepy and then touch off my journey to dreamland with some Krazy Kat. I love reading.
