I recently have taken to reading my copies of The New Yorker in the wee hours of the morning. My body doesn't seem to want to sleep between 1 and 3 a.m., so I get up and read.
It's a pleasant way of dealing with insomnia. The place is quiet, except for cat visits, and I don't get the vague guilt I feel when I take time to read from my "productive" daytime activities.
I wonder, though, about how the situation of reading affects what I read. Eventually, I read most of each magazine, but at night I seem to be choosing the longer issue-based articles over the reviews and casuals, which I fit in during cooking and lunches, and the fiction, saved for pre-bedtime and stolen daytime.
Do other people read different things at different times and in different places? Is the reading nook reserved for fiction and the office for professional journals?
I do know that for me, the memory of certain books is often tied to place. I read Lord of the Rings one summer under the maple tree at the farthest end of my parents' yard, and still think of all those elves and hobbits surrounded by green leaves with blue sky behind. Any mention of Theodore Dreiser brings back memories of the student lounge on my college campus, where I read An American Tragedy with a paper cup of hot chocolate from the Campus Club by my side. And I associate the grislier of Andersen's Fairy Tales with a hospital stay when I was 8 years old.
Fiction writers always hope that our work takes readers away from their present time and place and into the world we create. I want to believe that someone reading Fish-Eye Lens on a snowy day can feel the warmth of island life. But my own experience doesn't separate the book's world from my world. Instead, they connect.
Is it like this for everyone? Readers, speak up. This inquiring writer mind wants to know.
It's a pleasant way of dealing with insomnia. The place is quiet, except for cat visits, and I don't get the vague guilt I feel when I take time to read from my "productive" daytime activities.
I wonder, though, about how the situation of reading affects what I read. Eventually, I read most of each magazine, but at night I seem to be choosing the longer issue-based articles over the reviews and casuals, which I fit in during cooking and lunches, and the fiction, saved for pre-bedtime and stolen daytime.
Do other people read different things at different times and in different places? Is the reading nook reserved for fiction and the office for professional journals?
I do know that for me, the memory of certain books is often tied to place. I read Lord of the Rings one summer under the maple tree at the farthest end of my parents' yard, and still think of all those elves and hobbits surrounded by green leaves with blue sky behind. Any mention of Theodore Dreiser brings back memories of the student lounge on my college campus, where I read An American Tragedy with a paper cup of hot chocolate from the Campus Club by my side. And I associate the grislier of Andersen's Fairy Tales with a hospital stay when I was 8 years old.
Fiction writers always hope that our work takes readers away from their present time and place and into the world we create. I want to believe that someone reading Fish-Eye Lens on a snowy day can feel the warmth of island life. But my own experience doesn't separate the book's world from my world. Instead, they connect.
Is it like this for everyone? Readers, speak up. This inquiring writer mind wants to know.