I'd be obliged

Despite the regularity with which I post on this blog, I've just had a decent reminder that reading is not a job.

After Westerfeld's debacle (I refuse to call Leviathan anything but negative), I carried around in my backpack for a while George Berkeley's Principles on Human Understanding. Since I'd finally got my hands on it, I felt like I should read it, considering that he is my namesake.

But Berkeley does not make for good light reading. I still like his ideas -- that objects and ideas are only what we perceive, or what is perceived by an omniscient Spirit -- but it's very dense, and you have to be really involved to read it. I'd even say you need some background in other philosophy before delving into it; Berkeley often references Locke. I never had this much trouble reading Plato or Aristophanes, who come at the beginning of the philosophical timeline.

It's snowing out. It's a good day for reading... a fun book. I'd forgotten what I said earlier -- reading is a pasttime. It is also a means of exchanging information, but that pertains more to one's career than one's hobbies. I am personally interested in gathering knowledge about the classics of literature, which run in a fairly dialectical manner from the ancient Greeks up to the modern existentialists. I'm still interested in Berkeley, but should I ever decide to specialize, I would still need an extensive philosophical background.

So I'll be back to Berkeley, every now and then. But that's not going to be the subject of my blog any time soon.

The second reminder I got that reading is not a job is when I tried to read Rand & Robyn Miller's Myst: The Book of Atrus. Consider it background for the game I'm now playing, Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, which I've resolved to finish this time. However, like a romantic relationship, it's not always (or often) helpful to go back and try to read a book a second time -- and I've often tried to read this book. Mythology it has (and the merits of that are questionable, if not related directly to the story), but good writing quality it does not have. Most of the book is (as TVtropes.org calls it) scenery porn -- we're here to learn about the origin of an ancient world-building culture, and explore their worlds.

A lot of my posts have been negative recently. If you're a regular reader, you know that I'm not always complaining about books -- only half of the time, or maybe a third. No worries -- I'll find books I like soon. I just have to remember that I don't need to be reading certain books to be happy, and nor does anyone else.

(I don't even need to be writing about them on this blog, actually. I like to, as a document to my reading experiences, and as a matter of interest to readers.)