Foreign Languages, Reading, and Foreign Language Reading, Part 2

I’ve been feeling kind of down on myself lately because “I haven’t been reading so much.” The fact is, though, that I read a lot. Like, a lot, a lot. I just read articles, and blog posts, and comments on those blog posts, and Facebook posts, and comments on those Facebook posts, and Reddit posts, and comments on those Reddit posts.

And that’s not even counting the rabbit holes. I’ll see a reference to this place, or this person, or this company in an article and down the rabbit hole I’ll go. I was reading an article on “Lean In” feminism and Elizabeth Holmes (alleged con artist who started a company that had technology that supposedly could do an entire workup of your bodily functions from one drop of blood).

I followed a link from the article to a short article on Holmes’s claim that her dog, a Husky she named “Balto” was a wolf. That led me to wondering what was up with the case against her, so now as I write this, I have another tab open to two different articles about how she may be going to claim a “mental disease” caused her behavior and how the judge is allowing up to 14 hours of psychological testing over a two-day period to see if her brain is malfunctioning.

That’s a small divergence rather than a true rabbit hole, but I’ve gone from article to article, then back to Google to research something else that one of the articles reminded me of, for hours.

Today’s unrelated photo. I really loved this picture of the Iron Bridge in Ironbridge from our 2002 UK tour. Unfortunately, the very top of the picture was overexposed or something. I played around with the clone tool to try to darken that section, but it was imperfect, so I cut it off. I’ll continue playing with it, and one I get my butt back to my travel memories posts, and I get to that part of the UK trip, maybe I can do a new version of this image as it should look.

What I mean when I say that I’m not reading “enough” is that I’m way, way behind on my National Geographics and I’m not plowing through novels the way I used to. I am therefore putting forth an actual effort. Fiction is still going slowly for me, which kind of worries me, but I’m hoping it’s just that I’m just out of practice.

I’m really, really hoping that I’m just out of practice.

Thomas’s side of my bed is now covered in novels (more on those in my next post) and National Geographic magazines. Once I finish my current National Geographic issue, I’ll post about the travel-y stuff in it. Or maybe I’ll leave it until November. Oh, I’ve got so many National Geographics to read that I’m sure I can do this one now and still have plenty for November.

As to books, I’m a member of a book club, so that’s at least one fiction book per month. And there are occasional bonus books, so that’s two books per month for those months.

I also have a new fiction-reading thing I’m doing, but that’ll have to wait until my next post, because it deserves a post of its own rather than being crammed at the end of this one.