When it comes to reading I am, much like in my writing, seriously and possibly pathologically unfocused. Though i spend the majority of my free time reading, it is almost always in the form of periodicals or other short form writing, usually on the internet. I've been poor at reading books- fiction or non- since i was in high school.
I've tried, mostly in vain, to reverse this trend over the last several years. This summer I've made a stab at it with a pair of books, one sci-fi novel and another popular science fact. I read Phillip K. Dick's "Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said" over the course of several days at the beginning of this month. It was an excellent, if brief, story by an author whose drug use was as prolific as his writing. His story "We Can Remember it for You Wholesale," was adapted into film as "Total Recall," just to give you a rough idea of what kind of things were going on in this guy's head.
"Flow My Tears," is fiction of course, and for me that means a quick read, so long as the story is involving and the author inventive. I've had less luck in the past with nonfiction, specifically books that require you to "learn as you go." I ran into this with "Godel, Escher, Bach"; while fascinating, the subject matter can have a rather steep learning curve. Though i find this kind of reading invigorating, it is also slow and tedious as i find myself reading and re-reading trying to fully grasp all the concepts. GEB was exciting, but in the end i was simply far to lazy to read it.
I'm having better luck, however, with Richard Dawkins "The Ancestors Tale," a long but cleverly written book tracing our roots back to the dawn of evolution. Dawkins has a gift for making difficult (for a college drop-out, anyway) concepts less obtuse, while simultaneously not becoming overly dry or boring. I've always enjoyed learning from people who clearly not only understand buy ENJOY what they are discussing, and I'm discovering more and more that Dawkins is one of those people. I'm saying it- learning is fun. I'm 99% certain I'll finish this book, barring some sort of incredible excitement in my life that's not likely to happen (see my previous post).
Incidentally, Dawkins is, like myself, an atheist, and an outspoken one at that; his latest book is "The God Delusion"- sounds about right. I've included this short clip of him talking about atheism here- watch it or someone's god might smite you:
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