Books Can Be Confusing

Books Can Be Confusing

If I seem a little muddled these days, blame it on the books.  Against my better judgement, I am reading four books at once these days.  For most of my post-educational life, I have only read one book at a time.   Not that there haven't been books I never finished, or books that I set aside and only picked up again much later.  But to consciously be carrying from place to place up to four different books, is, well, unprecedented.

There are practical reasons for some of this, I guess.  I have a kindle you can't read at the beach with all that glare of sunlight and reflected water, so I have two mysteries underway at once--one paperback for the beach and one e-book for at home.  Then there's the book on poetry, chock full of tangents I can run off on in writing small pieces.  Then there's the philosophy book I picked up to read while waiting at the barbershop.  The latter two don't bear the restrictions that come with a narrative approach (needing to be read in order, front-to-back, requiring a certain minimum period of focus to allow time to pick back up with the story and its characters, and even the characters themselves who gradually reveal themselves (or are revealed) by the parts they play in the narrative, etc.).

So, I tend to pick up the non-fiction books for shorter snatches, although a philosophy book requires more than a little concentration, and the poetry book tends to stimulate the desire to pick up a pen or sit down at a keyboard to try things on for size.  So, you see, reading just has a few too many choices, and the narratives a few too many characters and plot lines to remember. Couple the issues with narrative with the mystery writers' penchant for jumping from one plot line to another throughout the book as they paint their picture from various points of view or literally suspend you from one plot line and move to another.  Today there is more than one reason they call them suspenseful.

The philosophy book is meant to infuse its subject matter into everyday life (obvious, if you remember the title is Philosophy For Everyday Life), so you sometimes ramble into unusual territory in conversation--another reason those around you observe that you might be "losing it."  I mean, how often do you work into the conversation the concept of identity--as in how can you be the same person you were 20 years ago, when your cells change out over the span of six years or so?  Or, if you learned some things and have since forgotten them, is that brain the same one that was you back then?

The Poet's Glossary has me itching to try something new, or, in this case very old.  So, I'm tempted to chuck this whole story, but...  Books just have me confused today, where's the beach?