Hold the 'Rithmetic

I like reading.

I don't know how to make other people like reading, which is a sorry admission. I try to show them different techniques for making it easier or more interesting, but I'm beginning to think "Pleasure Reader" is a gene. It's funny, realizing that once upon a time it would've been considered a bad gene, for those who lost themselves in novels were escapists on par with today's couch potatoes and Guitar Heroes.

I started using Goodreads.com recently because I thought it was one of those 2.0 social networking sites that made wiser-than-usual recommendations based on what you read.

It doesn't, but it's still pretty neat. For a long time I wish I'd kept track of every book I ever read. Now I will, since it doesn't involve a boring old spreadsheet on a vulnerable hard drive.

I'm adding books as I remember them, which is disturbingly not as easy as I'd hoped. (Or sometimes is just too daunting - do I really add every Far Side?) Here is what I'm currently reading, save Callgirl, which is probably the first book I've not found in their database. (I'm hoping it will be an antidote to the smugly unreadable Belle de Jour, a blog I stopped following for a reason, so heaven only knows why I checked out the book.)

Or here, visualize via the widget:

 

An RSS feed is also available.

I like writing.

Well, duh. But, for the past few months I've watched Epinions offer a-buck-a-review for anything over 200 words (double that if they're highly rated), and I think, "201 words? Easy money!"

Sure, a dollar is heaps less than what I was getting writing a 500-700-word column (big pizza money in those things, I tell you), but it also doesn't have to be proofread, well-organized, or written with the audience's needs in mind. (I'm not saying I ever accomplished any of those things, but not having to feel guilty about it may be worth the cheap pay.)

So, I'm active again at Epinions, making a little pin money, as Amy March once said. (Aside: the funniest thing I've read in forever has to be the descriptions of pin collecting in Pratchett's Going Postal. Not ornamental pins, but pincushion-style pins. Hilarious.) I hope it will nudge me back into the practice of writing without lapsing into bottomless introspection. However, I don't really recommend that you read any of the reviews, unless you want to see rehashes of thoughts on Disneyland attractions without any - let me repeat - proofreading, organization, or audience consideration.

Nine more working days until Spring Break. Fifty-eight more working days until exams. I've volunteered to teach Driver Ed next year in addition to English, despite my unpredictable allergy to sophomores, and I've volunteered to co-teach English in inclusion (mainstreamed special education + "regular" students) classes with a SPED instructor. It doesn't look like transfers will open up at the high schools near me (for reasons that would be too telling to explain), so trying some new approaches may be the cure for this rough (but often improving, only to be smashed again as new "kicked out of everywhere else" kids continue to arrive) year. I could go on, but I like to read, and I like to write, so I'm off to do one or the other.

Comments

[reese]

I miss your techie column. Here's what another writer, Andrea Barrett, had to say about writing: "It's hard to explain how much one can love writing. If people knew how happy it can make you, we would all be writing all the time. It's the greatest secret of the world."