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I’ve always been the type of person to keep up with the news. It’s not necessarily the best habit. C.S. Lewis wrote in Surprised by Joy,

Even in peacetime I think those are very wrong who say that schoolboys should be encouraged to read the newspapers. Nearly all that a boy reads there in his teens will be seen before he is twenty to have been false in emphasis and interpretation, if not in fact as well, and most of it will have lost all importance. Most of what he remembers he will therefore have to unlearn; and he will probably have acquired an incurable taste for vulgarity and sensationalism and the fatal habit of fluttering from paragraph to paragraph to learn how an actress has been divorced in California, a train derailed in France, and quadruplets born in New Zealand.

He’s probably right. I’m not sure where to find the balance between paying attention to what goes on in the world around me and, as he put it, an incurable taste for vulgarity and sensationalism.

This has come to the fore for me in the recent redesign of CNN.com. They now display a little graph of the most-read stories in the top right. As I write this, Heidi Klum’s Halloween is the most read story. It’s followed by three straight stories about extreme violence.

I have far more questions than I have conclusions, but perhaps the whole of western civilization could stand to take a look at what we’re interested in / fascinated by. Perhaps we should, as Lewis suggests, spend our time on things that will not be untrue or irrelevant ten years from now. I think our wonderous technology lends “news” to being irrelevant/untrue in ten minutes rather than ten years.

I’ve confessed in the past a tendency to read things because people say they’re great. Sometimes this results in grave disappointment (Hello there Toni Morrison, I’m looking at you), sometimes in indifference (Yeah, the three times I’ve read the first 100 pages of the Grapes of Wrath come to mind), and sometimes in abject delight.

Which, in reality, doesn’t prove anything at all except that enjoying a book is tied more to personality than to the book itself.

I’m reading Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. I started it because, well, it’s a classic. I realized 20 pages in that “it’s a classic” is a dumb reason to read a book. I gave her 30 more pages to make me care about the story. She did that, by proving the environment to be interesting, the characters to be interesting — not in a human sense, but in an archetypal sense.

So, I’ll let you know how it goes, but I’m glad to say that I’m reading it for the story, not for the “classic.” Here’s hoping the story delivers.

A while back, I read a post over at Challies. For those of you who don’t know, Tim Challies is a ridiculously popular blogger. He’s also a Canadian like myself. We also share a lot of the same beliefs about the world and God.

He recently did a series of posts called “Don’t Take Your iPod to Church.” I enjoyed the second post in particular. In that post, Tim addresses some of the problems with using an interactive, hyperlinked and ADHD friendly device for studying a seriously important book.

I’m inclined to agree, dear reader. I’m also inclined to think that maybe there’s an application for the rest of the reading we do. Not that I’m coming out against electronic reading formats in general. But perhaps, as Mr. Challies says, there’s something good about a medium that isn’t inherently distracting. Your thoughts?

So, I’ve been keeping quite occupied with some freelance work of late. I’ve spent long hours in front of the computer doing essentially non-creative tasks (typesetting is 10 percent creativity, all up front, and 90 percent consistency and asking “How did I do this the first time?”). So, I finally concluded that I should use the time wisely.

I surfed on over to Librivox. If you haven’t been there before, go now. Librivox is a huge collection of audiobooks (all public domain) read by volunteers. For the most part, it’s incredibly well done. Every once in a while, you may hit a chapter or two where the reading is less than perfect, but otherwise, it’s good stuff. It’s free. Did I say that yet? Free.

Anyway, I got there and I searched for fantasy works because, well, that’s my preferred genre. One of the first results was volume one of Le Morte d’Arthur. I realized that I hadn’t ever read more than an excerpt here and there, so I thought, here goes!

I’m enjoying it. I’m not very far in (twenty or so very short chapters), but my word is there intrigue! It’s fun to start to pick up on some of the Arthurian legends that I’ve seen allusions to in my more modern reading. I’ll keep you posted on what I think as I get further up and further in. So far, my one complaint is that everyone is constantly “wroth” with each other. Just get angry. Or mad. Or frustrated. Any of it… just don’t be wroth this time.

Oh, there it is, they’re wroth again.

Every once in a while, I try to get some exposure to literary fiction. It usually goes like this: “Well Self, I’d like to be a successful writer, so I need to read successful writers. I should find some stuff that’s not sci-fi/fantasy and read it to see what’s popular in the mainstream.” This is usually followed by a google search for the best novels of the 20th century or something like that.

I’ll end up trying to read All the Kings Men, or The Grapes of Wrath, or Beloved. And I’ll get somewhere between a handful of pages and halfway through before I just cannot drive myself to pick up the book any longer. Especially not if something fantastic is sitting beside it, waiting to be read. Oftentimes, I’d rather read bad science fiction than good literary fiction.

I always end up asking myself, what’s so great about literary fiction? I guess I hope it’s just a matter of taste. I hope it’s just a matter of some people genuinely preferring a story about the ordinary. I hope…

I hope I haven’t precluded myself from ever being taken seriously in the realm of literature by saying this. Oh well… give me the fantastic or give me death! Not really. Just give me something fun to read.

(And a side note: I realized after a few of these adventures that being listed as one of the best novels of the 20th century doesn’t have much (if anything at all) to do with being successful. Most of these novels were outsold greatly by the average Nicholas Sparks/James Patterson/Steven King/John Grisham release. So, maybe what I need to be reading is not what is best but what sells best to get an idea of what is currently successful. It’s kind of like the academy awards: there’s a massive disconnect between what critics adore and what people buy.)

I recently had Eric Flint recommended to me by a local librarian. (Yes, the local library staff are just that good.) I read it because a) I’m always looking for new things to read and b) alternate histories are an intriguing concept to me, and I like it when they’re well done.

Setting aside the Pro-American bias (doesn’t anyone else know that Canada won the war of 1812? Gee whiz), this was a neat little book. I don’t want to give too much away, but he really does stick to the rules he lays out in the back quite closely, and it’s fascinating to watch how events turn a little (and a lot) differently than they did in history.

Content-wise… well, this is definitely geared towards adults. His battle scenes are intense, the language is intense, and his characters are not without their flaws. I wouldn’t recommend that you send your twelve-year-old out to pick up this book and read. On the other hand, if you yourself have an appreciation for well-written period pieces about war, especially in the early 19th century, I’d recommend the book to you.