Thursday, June 7, 2007

On Useless Reading, and a Cool New Widget

Today I read 200 pages of a 340-page book. 20 pages into it, I knew it wouldn't be of much help to what I was doing: too off-topic, too general, too reliant on secondary sources, rather than primary materials.... Unfortunately, by that time, I was also really interested. So, rather than putting it down, I continued reading. I have vowed to finish it tomorrow morning before heading off to physical therapy, then take notes on it in the evening (no book goes wasted!) and be done with it.

To my readers who aren't academics, let me explain briefly what I mean by "reading" 200 pages in a day. Here's how it goes: you read the introduction and conclusion closely. Then, you read the introduction and conclusion of chapter one. Then you read the first sentence or two of every paragraph, slowing down to read more if something catches your interest. Move on to chapter two. Repeat.

Anyway, I'm not horribly concerned that this book hasn't yielded much for the book. I'm right now working my way through the short list of "books and articles with general-sounding titles that might, just maybe, have something useful." After that, it's on to the chapter-by-chapter lists. More on that when I get there.

Oh! And I'd like to draw your attention to the cool new "book in progress" widget that I first saw on New Kid on the Hallway's blog. it's pretty neat, huh? The problem is that the automatic percentage calculation seems to be off, so I have to manually calculate, then go in and fix the code. Still, it's fun.

But don't expect the numbers to move much (or at all) for the next couple of weeks. As I said, I'm reading.

5 comments:

squadratomagico said...

Hi, Notorious. I think I live in the same part of the country as you do (based on a comment you made over at NeW Kid's).

Congratulations on the year away and good luck with your writing!

Anonymous said...

Nice post, but it should really say "to my readers who aren't academics working in the humanities"... scientists (who are also academics, by the way ;-) ) engage in yet more odd types of reading!

Notorious Ph.D. said...

Squadra -- if your part of the country features a sprawling expanse of concrete that you have to drive for hours to see the end of, then yep, that's where I am.

Anon -- you're absolutely right. One of my friends here on my campus is a biologist, and it seems like our research lives are two totally different things. How we approach grant-getting is probably the biggest of those differences.

Anonymous said...

"two totally different things": Definitely! I very nearly went down the humanities road myself, and have a lot of friends in the various humanities fields. It's always fun when people (new students, say) don't know how it is on the Other Side. A natural science grad student aghast at how long it can takes to get a humanities PhD, maybe ("but.. can't you just get money from the federal government?!"), or a budding historian wondering why particle physicist don't seem to have any concept of a 'secondary source'...

This is the same Anon, by the way, though I'm going to get around to registering soon. I think. :)

Anonymous said...

Yuck -- and the awful I-didn't-edit-my-post-neatly-enough catastrophes in the above missive slipped through the net, too! It "can takes" a bit more effort than that if I'm not to embarrass all those other "scientist"...