My Book Challenge - Update

It’s been a long time since I last reported on my book challenge - and that’s because it’s been a disaster. I haven’t made any progress on any book since.

I’ve just changed tack again, starting yesterday. My new method is this:

1. Read for a timed half hour twice a day.
2. I may only read from one book during the half-hour.
3. The exception is if I finish the book, in which case I can read another for the balance of the time.
4. The half hours do not have to be the same book each time.
5. There is no limit on the number of books I can be reading using this method.
6. They must however be books, i.e. not blog posts, magazine articles, newspapers, etc.

To borrow a metaphor from the world of running, I am now seeing how far I can run in half an hour rather than seeing how long it takes to cover a certain distance. I’ve adopted that for my running practice as well - with one session of an hour. (4.63 miles today since you ask!)

How to Do Anything - Part II

In my previous blog post I said that you can do anything provided that you are willing to pay the price - and that the price is all the other things you could have been doing instead.

To put it another way, the price is being willing to give the project enough time.

As I said in my book Secrets of Productive People the secret of advancing a project is to give it sufficient regular focused attention.

Time is the essence of providing this attention.

And now, an example of how not to do it!

On March 24th, I published an article called My Book Challenge Amended in which I said that I was giving up my idea of reading one book at a time. The reason I gave was that I wanted to read Proust’s Du côté de chez Swann, but because it would take so long I was going to read it along with Tom Holland’s Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic and the third part of Andrew Robert’s Napoleon the Great.

What was the result of this decision? Well, I’ve just finished Rubicon, but I’ve read nothing at all of the other two books.

Now just see what has happened here. What I wanted to do was read a book (the Proust) which would take a considerable mental effort and a large investment of time. What I actually succeeded in doing was to read the easiest book on offer instead. I always went for this easy option rather than the two more demanding books.

The price of reading Rubicon was to have not read Proust. I would much prefered it to be the other way round. I’ve would have liked it to have been that the price of reading Proust was not to have read Rubicon.

Now if I’d decided to stick with my one book at a time rule I would have read quite a bit of the Proust, and none of Rubicon or Napoleon. But since it was the Proust I really wanted to read, that would not be a matter of too much concern.

This is how it works for us if we don’t identify clearly what it is that we want to go for, zero in on it and then devote our efforts to it as a priority.

Tomorrow: How to Do Anything - Part III

My Book Challenge - Update

Just finished Powell’s The Military Philosophers. What next?

I think I shall start on one of my major book projects - to read Proust’s À la Recherche du temps perdu in French (I read it in English translation more than 40 years ago). So here goes on the first volume,  Du Côté de chez Swann. Even just one volume of Proust is not exactly one of the shorter books I promised myself in my last update, so it will probably take me quite a while. Anyway, here goes:

« Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure… »

Read Since January 24th:

The Evolution of Everything by Matt Ridley.

The Valley of Bones by Anthony Powell

Napoleon the Great (parts 1 and 2) by Andrew Roberts

In Parenthesis by David Jones

The Soldier’s Art by Anthony Powell

The Military Philosophers by Anthony Powell

My Book Challenge - Update

It’s taken longer than I expected but I have now finished Part 2 of Napoleon the Great by Andrew Roberts. Before starting the third and final part, I will aim to read some shorter books, starting with The Military Philosophers by Anthony Powell.

I’ve so far stuck to my rule to read only one book at a time, and have finished the following since January 24th:

The Evolution of Everything by Matt Ridley.

The Valley of Bones by Anthony Powell

Napoleon the Great (parts 1 and 2) by Andrew Roberts

In Parenthesis by David Jones

The Soldier’s Art by Anthony Powell

My Book Challenge - Update

I’ve finished The Soldier’s Art and am now starting on the second part (of three) of Napoleon the Great. Reading one book at a time throws into relief the difference in speed between reading different types of book. So far I’ve had a popular science book (very fast), two fairly literary novels (fast), a history (slow) and a prose poem (very slow).

As well as being a slow read the Napoleon book is also very long, so it may be a while before I finish the second part. But finish it I will. No-list systems, such as the ones I have been testing, are ideal for just continuing to chip away at a reading project like this.

Anyway, I left Napoleon, having overthrown the Directory, poised to take on the mantle of First Consul…

My Book Challenge - Update

I finished David Jones’ In Parenthesis today, sixteen days after starting it. It’s a book that can’t be read fast and has to be taken in small chunks.

I’m pretty sure if it hadn’t been for my “one book at a time” rule I would never have finished it. But I’m glad I did even though it took longer than I was expecting.

Before I go back to Napoleon the Great (of which I’ve completed the first of its three parts) I feel the need for a bit of easier reading. So I’m going to read The Soldier’s Art, which is the eighth in Anthony Powell’s cycle of twelve novels A Dance to the Music of Time.

So for in my book challenge since January 24th  I have read:

The Evolution of Everything by Matt Ridley

The Valley of Bones by Anthony Powell - set in the Second World War

Napoleon the Great (part 1) by Andrew Roberts - set in the French Revolutionary Wars

In Parenthesis by David Jones - set in the First World War

and am now starting a second book set in the Second World War.

I didn’t deliberately set out to read quite so many war books - it just seems to have happened that way!

My Book Challenge - Update

Following a suggestion by Dafydd in the comments to my last update, I am treating Napoleon the Great as three separate volumes, using the three parts the book is divided into.

I finished Part 1 today and am leaving Napoleon for the time being, having just toppled the Directory and become Consul of the Republic.

My next book to read is In Parenthesis by David Jones, one of Faber & Faber’s “Poets of the Great War” series. This is not a well-known book, though T.S. Eliot called it “a work of genius”. It’s comparatively short, so I won’t be dividiing it up further.

My Book Challenge - Update

After eleven days how far have I got with my challenge to read only one book at a time? Well, I’ve stuck to the rule with Andrew Roberts Napoleon the Great, but progress has been slow. This is partly due to the fact that the book is much longer than I expected it to be, but also because it is very detailed and dense. It is most emphatically not the sort of book one can read as a novel!

I’m now on page 132, which is a bit over eleven pages a day. I’ve read roughly 46,000 words - about the length of The Great Gatsby, which I read last year and, as far as I can remember, took me only three or four days to read.

I’m beginning to think that it would make more sense to have one fast book and one slow book going at a time, rather than just one book. I don’t think this would necessarily make the slow book go any slower. The trouble is that most of the books I want to read are slow books!

My Book Challenge - Update

I’m getting on well with Andrew Roberts’ Napoleon the Great, but maybe I would have done better to have chosen a book for demonstration purposes which wasn’t half the length of War and Peace!

I hadn’t quite realised how many words there would be in a 1½-inch thick paperback on thin paper with very small print.

However it’s very interesting - Napoleon’s life puts any novel in the shade. And I am now on page 97 of 820, which is about 35,000 words read - about the equivalent of C.S. Lewis’s The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. I’m sure I got through that a lot faster when I read it thirty years ago, but I wasn’t looking up every person and place in Wikipedia as I was going along!

My Book Challenge

One of the challenges I set myself (and my new time management system) two days ago was to read only one book at a time. I would allow myself to read no other book until I’d either finished the designated one - or decided that I didn’t want to read it any more.

Surprisingly this is new territory for me. I read a lot, but I have shelves full of partially read books. It’s not that I never finish a book, but I finish a heck of a lot less than I want to. Most of my unfinished books are unfinished not because I made a definite decision not to finish them, but because I got distracted by another book, and then another, and so on. I don’t think I’m alone in this.

Anyway, I have just finished the first book under these new rules. It is “The Evolution of Everything” by Matt Ridley. Now to choose the next book. Where do I start?

I think I’m going to re-read an old favourite, “The Valley of Bones” by Anthony Powell. Re-reading (in this case for the third time) is one of the great pleasures of life.

Update on Tuesday, January 26, 2016 at 22:24 by Mark Forster

Well, that’s “The Valley of Bones” finished. What next? I think Andrew Roberts’s “Napoleon the Great”.