Reading is essential.  Reading makes your brain grow big and strong.  Read it and weep.  Writers have to read the same way baristas have to drink coffee.  I’m no doctor, and that last statement doesn’t make total sense, but I know things.  I also know that I’ve chewed through about five books this year.  I didn’t finish all of them.  I have voluntary attention deficit disorder, maybe.  Or these fucking books eat shit.

I did complete one out of the five books I’ve started.  The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.  It’s a good book, broken up into appetizer sized portions.  If you’re being a bitch about anything creative (or otherwise) in your life, you should probably read it.  I’ll let you borrow it.  Late fees apply.  Forgivable only if you lend it to someone else so it doesn’t become another object in my closet.

I bought a handful of books one night after being inspired by some youtube parkour video.  Unfortunately, that’s not a lie.  I bought a bunch of self help, rah-rah shit that makes sense for twelve pages and repeats itself ad nauseam for another 280 pages.  I can’t do it.  I get bored and boredom makes me violent (also encourages diarrhea).  Then I put gum in peoples hair and everything stinks.  It’s been a bumpy road of failed reading.  Not the same as reading out loud in remedial English, but similar.

I’m beating my way through Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre.  I’m on page 140 and barely known what’s going on.  I’ve got plenty of excuses.  The bookmark keeps falling out.  People interpret me and I have to read the same paragraph six times.  There are some really good passages, but every other goddam word is a French street name or some shit.  For some reason, the French use nine vowels to every one consonant.  Stick to fried potatoes slivers, French-fucks.

The Jean-Paul Sartre isn’t a self-help book.  I’ll get through it eventually.  At that point, I’ll dribble whatever I come out with down to you idiots.

Who the fuck am I to give book reviews?  There’s a place for critics and it smells of sulfur and wet socks.  I’ll tell you if I liked a book, but there’s no reason to take a red pen to it like an undersexed college professor.  There must be something in all of these books, even the self-help repetitious ones.  Or maybe publishers get honey-dicked the same way I got honey-dicked into binge buying them on Amazon.  Who knows?

Final tally:

Finished books:  

• The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

Unfinished books:

• The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss (about half way, potentially abandoned)
• Vagabonding by Rolf Potts (two-thirds of the way through, on the fence)
• Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre (three-quarters, crawling toward the finish line)

Three other books will remain unnamed until I make it to a double digit page number.

So, I have been reading.  Very slowly — like Helen Keller with mittens on. 

To be continued…

Keep reading my friends.