Week Two: The Rest Is Noise*

600 pages on the history of 20th century music in 5 days?
Possibility:  Doable [insert caveat about probability here]
Pages to read per day:  aprrox. 150

The book’s magnificent & haunting cover had been calling to me for months. Surely, if I set my will to the task, I could do anything even when confronting a busy week…

I was mistaken.
I was sincerely, ridiculously mistaken.

Total pages read to date: 347 

Defeated & feeling more than a little bit like a failure, my salvation came on Thursday evening via a manifestation of the future.
A little tablet of beautiful, snowy white goodness.

My very own kindle.

I plugged the beauty in and set about to select the perfect replacement for my failure. It was time to forget & move on. But what to read?

Perhaps something lite & fluffy, with no residual aftertaste.
But wouldn’t that leave me feeling cheap?
In my current state of failure/vulnerability I decided that although time required I pick something under 300 pages, I could not deal with the emotional let down of a poor read. There needed to be substance to my rebound read.

Plus, I was a little nervous about my new reading companion.

With a conventional paper bound book, I knew what to expect. How the pages felt & responded to my touch. With this, my new toy, I had no way of knowing how long it would take me to find & get into a  comfortable rhythm.

But then again, what is this all about, if not exploring new challenges & learning more about the world & how to live in it.

It seems somehow fitting then that I reclaimed my victory over week 2 with our old, salty friend Churchill…

*UPDATE: WEEK TWO: Winston Churchill by John Keegan