Rougon-Macquart

Those of you that have been following my reading progress, and I am sure there must be at least one person out there, hang on, no, I forgot my mother doesn’t blog anymore, so it is possible that I truly am talking to myself, will be pleased to know that I have finally finished Zola’s ‘The Fortune of the Rougons’. Not before time, I hear you say, and rightly so. This book has taken me an inordinate amount of time to get through, given its limited length. There are twenty books in this series, ‘The Rougon-Macquart Cycle’, and given the speed of progress thus far, I am looking forward to a finish sometime in early 2015. I may even throw a small celebratory shindig, to which you shall all be cordially invited.

I have been pondering the reason for my slow progress and I think that it comes down to my current limited ability to multitask, when one of those tasks is reading. When I was younger this never seemed a problem. I could do almost anything and read at the same time. I could read in the car, whilst watching television, whilst eating, whilst playing the guitar, whilst walking, like I say, pretty much anything. And I did.

Now though, it seems like a much larger chunk of my limited brain capacity is required to carry out individual tasks. I need to concentrate on things more directly. I guess the reading in a car as a child was easier. Reading whilst driving is apparently considered a pretty dangerous pastime, and not one I can comfortably consider, although I have been known to read in a traffic jam. I always find that the sound of irate drivers sounding their horns lets me know that the traffic has begun to move again. Pretty handy really, as it is shit boring looking at the arse of the car in front, just to see when it starts moving.

I am working on restoring my ‘reading multitasking skills’, but I am interested in other people’s views. Does it get harder to multitask as you get older, particularly when one of those tasks is reading? Is it just a temporary blip that can be overcome? I believe that it is. Finally, what weird and wonderful things can you do whilst reading? Can you read whilst riding a unicycle or taking a shower, for example? Let me know.

I have decided to undertake some gentle reading today, following the excesses of yesterday. I spent yesterday visiting the Cambridge Beer Festival, a tradition that my friends and I have followed for many years. Every year we take the last Friday of the beer festival, the Friday before the Spring Bank Holiday, off of work and spend the day at the beer festival. This year for the first time in many years the weather was atrocious. It rained pretty much all day, turning the field in which the marquee was pitched into a muddy bog. Still, there were plenty of interesting beers to sample, and sample them we did. Needless to say I have been feeling a little delicate today, and in particular, very lethargic.

I decided the best option would be to find something reasonably easy to read whilst mildly hung over. I am reading ‘The Vintage Teacup Club’ by Vanessa Greene. Then I want to make some head way with rest of my reading over the bank holiday weekend. I am still working my way slowly through Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’. Then I am finally going to get started on reading Raymond. E. Feist’s Magician’s End. In fact I have just slipped the perfect, as yet undamaged, dust cover from my copy of Magician’s End in preparation. After this I think I am going to start Emile Zola’s ‘The Fortune of the Rougons’, the first part of the twenty book ‘Les Rougon-Macquart’ cycle.

So some decent goals set up. Now all that remains is for me to fail to achieve them. Not that I intend to get all of this reading done this weekend, it is likely to take a bit longer than that.