A good day was had, recap

I must say, today turned out to be an almost productive day.

1. Working hard at not working hard at being a polymath


Which is to say, although I still don’t think I’m up for the challenge of trying to be an astute and knowledgeable person on a broad spectrum of topics, I’ve nonetheless begun stabbing at the concept with my own mind. Because despite not thinking I have the time to pursue the whole polymath project, I have begun to try and least work my mind a little more, expanding my horizons if I can. For the last five days, I’ve been working on reading a chapter a day from volume one of the Story of Civilization. I realize its a bit dated (1950ish), and even my weak knowledge of history has already spotted at least one tragic mistake in the volume (praise for the discovery of the Piltdown Man – which in 1953 was proven to be a hoax), but even so my goal (ultimately) is to read the whole series.

The guilty part here is that I have the whole series in hardback, acquired decades ago from a library sale, and yet when I finally sat down to read one of the volumes, I bought it for the Kindle. Why? A few reasons, actually. First, I can actually mark, highlight, and write notes all over the pages, and it won’t affect the actual book. Second, and this is a sign of age and, more directly, laziness, because I can up the font to something comfortable on my eyes (the original is a nice 8pt font if I had to wager, but its hard to say through the tired eye squinting). The truly lazy reason, though, is because I can carry the iPad or phone with me anywhere, and catch a few pages towards my chapter goal whether its in line, in bed, or what have you, without having to lug around lighting or propping the volume. Mock me, its ok, but I’ve read more from the book in the last five days than I have in the fifteen or twenty years since I first acquired the hardback.

2. Catching up on book reviews

Cyber MondayI actually feel less guilty about this one, even though it does vex me a little. Work is finally (FINALLY) calming down. Cybermonday was a success, and the last six months or so of preparation work and sleepless 5am equipment swaps and load tests have finally paid off. No matter what else, the virtual environment everything is running in is able to deal with every load we’ve been put under so far. But falling to the wayside the last month or so has been my book reviews, which tend to only happen when I have gaps. Thanks to an arrangement with Pyr and the miracle of Netgalley, lately I’ve been getting most of my ARC’s electronically. This is two great things in one, because it means less sagging bookshelves, and I can carry all of the books around with me on the iPad. Because, you know, books are heavy, and turning paper pages is hard. Obviously I haven’t updated my Goodreads reading list in a while, because neither the book I’m reading now nor the Oriental Heritage are on the list, but as a side effect of my commitment to read the Durant book, I’ve also decided to commit myself to reading at least one chapter a day from an ARC. Slow but sure, that means that (generally speaking), I should finish a book every month (both from the Story of Civilization and from my pile of ARC’s). Not perfect, not ideal, but it feels good to be making progress here.

3. Got some writing done (grammar be damned)

I mentioned in my last post that I thought I’d finally figured out my internal storyteller issues. The results so far are “yes, yes you have.” I pecked out the first 1k of a new short story today, along with some notes for some of the major turning points in the story, as well as the last line or two. I know, sounds weird to me too, but lately its the last line of a story that comes pretty early to me, which gives me a target to aim the story towards as I write.

Hopefully this weekend, I’ll start the revisions and clean up of the story I wrote last week, though I’m trying not to rush it. I’m learning that’s it better for me not to rush these things, but to come back to the story after its had some time to settle, so that the story seems fresh to me again when I go to read it. It helps me not miss the glaring gaps because my mind fills in the still fresh intent of a paragraph, rather than what I actually wrote down.

4. Time with the kids: UNLOCKED

The last 24 hours has seen the raising of the Christmas tree (the razing is already scheduled for this tree), shoe (actually, boots) shopping for the girls, and dinner out with the kids, capped with a long drive through the neighborhood to see who has lights up yet.

I know I don’t talk much about my family in the blog, and I’m not sure why – they’re an amazing set of kids that, unfortunately, are growing up to be just as big a pain as their Daddy. Also, I am whipped. More and more lately its become an imperative for me to spend some decent, uninterrupted quality time with them when I can. Afterwards, I feel exhausted and like all I want is to crawl into a quiet cocoon and go to sleep, but then I have days where I don’t get a chance to see them and I remember why.

5. There is no number five.

Not really. I think the rest of the evening is going to be spent quietly with Kim, watching TV while she works on one of her ornament orders. The new issue of Clarkesworld came out today, so I’ll probably dig into that if I catch up on everything else. There were other, far more mundane achievements today, like doing the dishes, etc., but these are the ones I’m counting.

I hope your weekend’s turning out awesome too!

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3 thoughts on “A good day was had, recap”

  1. Will (and Arlel) Durant’s STORY OF CIVILIZATION series is my favorite history series, and one of my favorite reads of all time. I’ve read the first 3 books in the series (the first 2 twice!) and when I find time, I try to tackle another. I own all 11 in original hardcover and I believe they’ve all been released as Kindle editions, as well. (I have several of them.)

    Durant’s style and his writing are among the best I’ve encountered for a nonfiction writer, and this says a lot coming from a guy whose favorite overall writer is Isaac Asimov.

    The books may seem dated but they give such a great view of history. And for the record, Volume 1 was not written in the 1950s–it was published in 1935, before WWII.

  2. Thanks, Jamie! The correction on the publication date actually clears up some of the lingering questions I had about the book (references to steamers but never a mention of commercial planes flying the Nile, for example).

    Of course your mention of the complete _eleven_ books in the series made me realize either I can’t count (saved in this case because of the number of fingers on both hands) or I’m missing a book – which is actually the case. Of course, its book eleven, so I might not have realized it for quite a while since I have a complete 1-10 🙂

  3. The irony, of course, is that Durant’s original plan was to cover the entire spectrum in 5 volumes. I think he mentions this in the preface to the first book. Instead, it grew to 11 books spanning 40 years (1935-1975). Pretty remarkable, when you think about it. That is an entire career!

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