Quality vs Quantity

Not to brag, but I can read in other languages. Well, only one, actually: Japanese – one day I’ll add some more, I hope, but right now, it’s actually just a grand total of two. Lately, though, I haven’t read very many non-English books and I blame this blog and my Book Count Project. The lure of getting a higher and higher count and how puffed my pride gets when I achieve those high counts occasionally leaves me a little reluctant to spend time on books that I know it will take me longer to read. I read very well in Japanese, but I also read very slowly in Japanese. Probably about six times as slowly.*

Last year I didn’t finish a single book in Japanese (though I am pretty sure I started one or two). So, this year I think perhaps I won’t go for the high score, exactly, but I will go for that eternal binary: Quality over Quantity.

Not that I really think that I pad my numbers with “easy” books – at least I don’t intend to. I do, as you know, like junk food fiction and I think it has a place in everyone’s reading life, but I hope you know that I never intend to let it take over my diet. It’s hard to make the quality goal, however, without making it look like you are admitting to such an embarassing fact. Oops.

What started this literary soul searching was, one: I am only two thirds of the way through The Brothers Karamazov and it’s been fourteen days. Ouch. Two: I recently watched a movie adaptation of a Japanese book, Shokudou Katatsumuri, and I thought I might like to write about it. In fact there have been a number of adaptations of Japanese novels that have really interested me and I have really enjoyed.

So, goal: read more challenging books and more Japanese books. Let go to my attachment to the high score. Submit myself humbly to books that take me a long time to read. I also think it will be a very interesting project to write about books in English that I’ve read in Japanese. I’m not sure what kind of final product I’m going to get, but it will be an interesting experiment.

So watch this space for some exciting looks at literature across the Pacific! Across the Pacific from one specific place! An Island! I think it will be fun (and improving!) times.

*I read in English really, really fast. When I was a child I was told that I couldn’t possibly be enjoying them if I went so fast. This is rubbish, naturally.