Monday, December 16, 2024

Reading 100 pages a day

 I read Matthew Walther’s essay “The One Hundred Pages Strategy” with fascination.

Walther, editor of The Lamp, reads 100 pages a day. He describes that as a strategy, rather than a goal. He discusses ways he’s been able to make more time for reading.

I just can’t think that way — although his essay did make me think.

I suppose I see reading as a kind of pleasure: a vital one. But if I decided that the ice cream cone is a vital pleasure, it would not dawn on me to let no day pass without eating five.

For me, something about a real pleasure resists quantification.

• Matthew Walther, “The One Hundred Pages Strategy”; The Lamp, Christmas 2024. It’s here:

https://thelampmagazine.com/issues/issue-26/the-one-hundred-pages-strategy

at

1 comment:

  1. Michael LeddyDecember 18, 2024 at 6:42 PM

    His essay reminded me of what someone said when I explained that it was difficult to do research and critical writing during the fall or spring semester — oh, it’s easy, fifteen minutes here, fifteen minutes there. And he wasn't joking.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

'The Problem of Tobacco'

 Wendell Berry, who taught English at the University of Kentucky, was probably the state’s most famous farmer. He argued with the dean of th...

  • Alice Oswald's poem on battle
     An appropriate read for Memorial Day? How about Alice Oswald’s long poem  Memorial , which recounts how soldiers in the  Iliad  met their e...
  • Lang: 'Letters to Dead Authors'
      Andrew Lang, a Scottish polymath who lived from 1844 to 1912, wrote   Letters to Dead Authors . I like the idea of the book, rather than t...
  • The things you hear
      Some days you go into the woods and see all kinds of things. Some days you don’t. And then there are days when you don’t see but   hear . ...