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recent posts
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Krispy Teacups
Ending Koala Overkill
Hell... Handbasket... How?
Night Freak (Well, Dawn Actually)
Hating the Chair
If You Can't Do It, There's Always Buying It
Endless Distraction
Oh, Grow Up
Applying Oneself
The Colic Defense
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You've got questions, she's got answers. Be among the first to read Elise Mac Adam's new etiquette guide.
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Painless Improvement
Autumn is the season of good intentions. Having grown up in academic environments and followed that up by spending all sorts of time in school, I think of the new year in terms of sharp pencils, sweaters, and promises to be smart, disciplined and efficient with good eating habits and nicely brushed hair. And tidy.
And then candy corn season rolls around and indolence settles in and I remember my true nature.
This is not to say that I give up the struggle and in my efforts, I embrace all kinds of peculiar self-improvement methods. The latest is a way of getting myself to read things I wouldn't ordinarily pick up, mostly because I'm swamped with other books.
I read somewhere about Daily Lit, a free email service that emails little bites of public domain texts to you every day until the book has finished, and am completely sold. Each morning (sadly at an hour that has been steadily creeping back further and further) while Felix smears his face with preserves and toast, I gulp down a fragment of The Beautiful and the Damned. Unless I get ambitious or really fall in love with the book, it will take me 160 days to get through the thing, which is quite some time, but when I think that there is a good chance I wouldn't have read it at all (Fitzgerald is not my favorite), I realize it isn't a bad deal and those early morning minutes can just as easily be spent contemplating my toes, which is more depressing and less edifying.
Daily Lit doesn't have enormous amounts of stuff, but I’m pleased to plan a future with painless self-improvement. Next stop: Paradise Lost, I think. I remember nothing of it from high school, and it is only 108 segments long. I suppose if you really want to live with something you could sign up for Emily Dickinson's poems, which arrive in 444 parts. If one wanted, one could even program a theme month. October, for instance, lends itself to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (a mere 32 parts) or a Sherlock Holmes case, like the relatively brief A Study in Scarlet (51 days of entertainment).
Daily Lit does offer a "read the next segment immediately" option for people who get caught up or who just hate cliffhangers. I can imagine a few moments in The Moonstone (238 parts) or The Portrait of a Lady (2 volumes, 264 parts total) that would make me demand to read several sections at a time.
Who knows if this self-improvement project will have life after The Beautiful and the Damned, but I have a small sense of accomplishment for at least 5 minutes every morning, and since this is the season of bulk candy, I need some virtue to counter my gluttony.
posted by Elise at 12:16 PM
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said...
What a wonderful idea! I just signed up. Thanks for the tip.
10/06/2006 2:23 PM
said...
Cool idea, Elise! I'm not sure I could stomach reading Henry James early in the morning--he's more of a settle in for a cup of tea and nod off kind of a guy, but "The Beautiful and the Damned" sounds perfect.
--Elizabeth
10/06/2006 4:14 PM
Beatrice said...
Hi Elise,
Thanks for pointing me in the direction of Daily Lit. I hadn't heard of this site before, but now I've signed up to get e-mail segments of A Christmas Carol from it. I'm looking forward to reading that novel and whatever other books on that site which catch my attention.
10/08/2006 11:31 AM
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