I’ve actually listened to this twice—once when it first came out, and then again when my book club picked it.

Both times, I enjoyed it. Vowell reads the audiobook herself, and I love the way she delivers lines.

One of the biggest problems I had with the book was that it was hard to keep track of the people, even though I minored in history and still read history and had heard of most of the people she was talking about. Probably this was a problem because I was listening rather than reading.

The other problem I had was that it felt too short, somehow, like it was just getting good and then it was over. I wanted more information about Williams and Hutchinson, especially. Of course, some of my fellow book clubbers didn’t like the book enough to finish it, so perhaps for them it was too long.

I liked it. I liked the focus on how intellectual the early settlers were, and how each of the people Vowell describes had their own firm beliefs, which were actually quite different from each other (and occasionally rather internally inconsistent, especially with regard to the indigenous people). I think Vowell did a good job of picking apart the settlers’ fussiness about God and laws, state vs. religion, and showing how it still affects us now. Plus, funny.

My friend Ubereditor, at work, gave me this book: Ben Yagoda’s The Sound on the Page: Great Writers Talk About Style and Voice in Writing. Actually, I saw it on her desk, asked if I could borrow it, and then never got around to reading it for a year or so. Finally, I gave it back to her, and then she bought another one and gave me back the one I had borrowed.

And that itself was months ago.

So finally I got around to reading this, and I ran through it in a day. Though I have to be honest about how I read it. I read the whole intro. Then I skipped Part 1, which was a discussion of theories of style. I read Part 2, about practice, which was mostly lengthy quotes from writers. After that, I went back and skimmed Part 1, stopping at writer quotes and reading those in full.

I picked up this book this particular weekend because I’m finally working on my novel again and I was looking for some inspiration. It wasn’t exactly the kind of inspiration I needed, but I got a few things I could use. After I finished skimming and put the book down, I had to go read “Sonny’s Blues” (James Baldwin), my favorite short story ever, because it turned out that that was the kind of inspiration I was looking for.

I had stopped updating here because I started using GoodReads, but then I realized that I really miss this.

And also, I just had to read How Full Is Your Bucket? for work, and I couldn’t not mention it.

Saying a bad thing about this book is like kicking your grandma. Actually, saying a bad thing about this book is like telling your grandma that the sappy birthday card she just gave you promotes a laughably simplistic view of the world.

This book, let me be clear, promotes a laughably simplistic view of the world. And that would be fine, if the people in charge at my workplace didn’t think that it was so important that they bought 85 copies (one for everybody!) and asked us all to read it.

This means that the people in charge at my workplace are either very shallow thinkers who read the book and thought “wow!” or they think that all of us are very shallow thinkers who would be a lot more happy and productive if we just learned to think positively and tell each other how great we are.

Plus, it is so hard not to snort every time someone says the title of the book. So many, many dirty jokes. But, alas, so many nice old teacher ladies at my work.

Anyway, my bucket is mostly empty at this time.

I called this site “A Study of Reading Habits,” but really I don’t write about my reading habits much. I can describe my habits, though. I think I’ll describe them according to why I read them.

Comfort

Mainly, I read in bed, just before I go to sleep. If I read something too troubling or thought-provoking or scary at that time, then either I won’t fall asleep or I’ll fall asleep and have terrible dreams. So before bed, I tend to read genre novels–because I know sort of what to expect. And I especially like to read genre novels (mysteries and fantasy novels, with some science fiction) that are part of a series, because then I really, really know what to expect and can judge whether I should be reading it before bed. And in addition to that, I tend to re-read a lot of my series novels.

In the past few months, for example, I’ve re-read for bajillionth time all the Lindsey Davis/Didius Falco Roman mystery novels. Plus I read the most recent two of those for the first time. That’s 18 novels.

I also re-read four old Barbara Hambly novels (the Dark books, plus A Stranger at the Wedding) and two newer ones (the Raven sisters books). I re-read an old Tanya Huff book (The Fire’s Stone) and the sixth Harry Potter and all the Vimes books by Terry Pratchett.

I’m sure I re-read more than that, but that’s all I can think of right now.

Entertainment

In the past few months, I read some books I hadn’t read before: the new Harry Potter and a young adult novel called Haters. Those were both entertaining. I read Haters because I went to a writing conference and my workshop teacher was the author, Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez. (She was a hilarious and attentive teacher, and she’s a great writer.)

And I got the new Tanya Huff book in the her space opera series, which rocks (both the series and the new book). I listened to two new Charlaine Harris books in series I’ve been reading (the one about the vampires and the one about the chick who feels dead people).

Then a blog entry within a blog entry got me interested in Nicola Griffith, so I tracked down her first two Aud Torvingen books, The Blue Place and Stay, which are pretty cool noirish kind of books. I like them a lot, though in the second one, Aud is recovering from the death of someone close to her, and I kept being annoyed because that character never felt to me like a fully developed character, so I can’t figure out why Aud is so fucked up over it. But aside from that, these books are good, and I’m planning to get ahold of the third one.

Finally, I read Michael Chabon’s new novel, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, which was so good I can’t even write about it.

Sports/Fitness

I like to read books and magazines about the physical activities I enjoy, so I read a lot of stuff about yoga and running and occasionally some stuff about bicycling. I . . . somehow never end up reading a whole book, though, because I skip over the stuff I already know and troll the index for things I’m interested in.

A few months back, though, I got re-interested in skating, so I read most of Rollergirl (about Austin’s recent roller derby resurgence) and skimmed Inline! (a how-to guide). I read only part of these books not because they’re bad or anything. I got more interested in doing some actual skating, so my non-bedtime reading time was limited. (No nonfiction at bedtime. I don’t know why. This is just a rule.) And then I hurt my stupid hip, so I had to lay off skating altogether, and I certainly didn’t want to read about it.

I skimmed through Chi Running, Body, Mind, and Sport, and Yoga for Depression. I’ve just started Jeff Davis’s book about yoga and writing, called The Journey from the Center to the Page (also because of the writing conference).

Influence of Other People

My brother has gotten interested in chef-ing and recommended some audiobooks about it, so I listened to Kitchen Confidential (I know, a decade after everyone else read it) and I’m now listening to Bill Buford’s Heat. My conclusion so far is that restaurant kitchens are just like I remember them, even though the ones I worked in were all crappy franchises and not at all like the starred restaurants described in those books. And also, chefs are a bunch of nutty motherfuckers.

I guess there are other reasons I read, too, but these have been the ones influencing my reading this year.

A couple years ago, I listened to Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink. Just this past week, I listened to The Tipping Point. And I have the same thing to say: the claims are so general as to be indisputable, but the anecdotes and examples are entertaining.