MIKE JAMES: Page here, page there 112709

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November 26, 2009

Anonymous The Daily Independent Thu Nov 26, 2009, 10:45 PM EST

The remote control may be the worst thing that ever happened to my ability to focus, or it may be the best.

Or it may be neither, but the little box with buttons is on my mind now as I think about my shrinking powers of concentration.

It started with the TV, of course. The touch of a button frees me from the shouting hucksters who inhabit the five-minute purgatory between show segments.

And I touch — boy, do I touch — because life is short and five minutes of Vegematics and Cialis is five minutes I’ll never get back.

Often, however, to blip away from a show is to leave it entirely. (Will the elves help Mom and Dad and the kids quit their bickering and learn the true meaning of Christmas ... who really cares?)

Television is not the issue, however. To miss the resolution of any TV show, whether wholesome family drama, snarky comedy, or hard-boiled detective mystery, doesn’t diminish life in the least.

The thing is, TV habits have infected my reading patterns. There was a time when starting a book meant keeping my nose down until the last page. What happens next drove me from Chapter 1 to THE END.

Now, however, the house is littered with books in progress. Half a dozen are on the nightstand and three or four more are on the desk in the kitchen. Another is tucked beneath the futon in the spare bedroom.

It’s hard to stick with one all the way through because the older I get the more I realize the sad fact: so many books, so little time.

It makes for abrupt shifts in tone, to say the least. Based on my current reading load, it goes something like this: A chapter of Jane Austen’s “Emma” in the morning followed by a few pages of “Snow Angels” by Jim Thompson. Austen carries her plot forward through dialogue. Her characters never lounge over snacks and beer, they sit oh-so-politely on hard chairs with their backs straight and feet on the floor.

Thompson, whom I am reading because he’s originally from around here, drives the action with mutilated corpses and blood-spattered crime scenes.

Another day might begin with a little Douglas Adams — it’s his “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” under the futon — and continue with a little “Dark Journey, the Tragedy of the Donner Party” by Allen Eckert. The Donner book has been taking me longer than expected. It’s just the kind of well-researched, smoothly written popular history that non-scholars like me appreciate, but the trouble is, I know what’s going to happen and it won’t be pretty.

Another day you could catch me with James Boswell’s diary (I love it because it makes me feel like I’m snooping) one moment and H.L. Mencken’s memoir another.

Also in the bedside stack is Moby Dick, which, having never read all the way through, I started a few months ago. It sounded after a few chapters and hasn’t come up for air since.

There are others but the point is I worry sometimes that I’ll keep starting other books and never finish any of them. On the other hand, maybe it means my mind is capable of juggling diverse subjects, catching each for a moment and then throwing it back up in the air.

I like to think so.

MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com or at (606) 326-2652.

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