Sobriquet 39.18

I'm finding that this whole twenty pages per night thing is really working well for me. I mean, it's only a small amount of reading, but I do spend less time fretting about the number of pages I need to get through than I do when I aim for five times that amount. Of course, Aesop's tortoise taught me this lesson long ago, but it wasn't until I applied the slow-but-steady approach to William Gaddis's JR that such an approach started making sense to me. And I find it helps me retain more of a book when I read it slowly, spending a longer time immersed in the fictional world (I actually felt a sense of loss when I closed the back cover on JR Vansant's final words).

I ordered copies of Dusklands and In the Heart of the Country as well as Doubling the Point a few days ago, though I doubt I will devote much space in the dissertation to Coetzee's pre-1990 fiction. I do, however, want to read the novels I have not yet read just to be ensure my reading of the author is as comprehensive as I feel it should be.

For tomorrow: Keep reading.