Writers Unbound

Does Slow and Steady Still Win the Race?
I finished my first book on the list, Emma Brown by Clare Boylan (and Charlotte Bronte). I’ll post a review soon. A quick summary: I enjoyed it, but not as much as I’d hoped to. It’s worth a read, but it’s not worth putting your current read down for.

I’m working my way through My Several Worlds by Pearl S. Buck and Getting Things Done by David Allen. A strange simultaneous combination, I know. That should be one kicker of a review. I’m further along in Allen’s book, which has lots of sections I feel comfortable just skimming. Maybe you don’t count that as actual reading, but I do! And it’s my party… so, um… oh, never mind.

The Buck book is slower going. It has lots of words on lots of pages. Itty bitty text. Not that I’m complaining. I’ve just gotten lazy and dependent on bolded paragraph headings and little illustrative graphs and charts every three pages or so. I love Buck’s writing, however. Part of the slow pace is simply that everything she says is so good. I keep folding down page corners and highlighting paragraphs so I can find them later to muse as meditative and quotation material. At this rate, I’ll be quoting about a paragraph from every other page.

It’s a very different experience than reading Allen’s book. The much-touted GTD concept is smart and logical, but it’s so common sense that sometimes I just feel like Allen is coming up with ways to say the same thing so he can fill up a whole book about the GTD method. It’s not that complicated, but it’s over-explained. (Hence, the skimming.)

Enter Pearl S. Buck who, in the midst of a simple story about one childhood day in China, manages to make these incredibly wise and pithy observations about culture, life, government, character… This woman packs her words so full of meaning that I slow down to avoid missing any of it.
It’s worth the slow progress. Emma Brown was a quick read, and the other Allen book I have on my list should go equally fast, so I hope to catch up and still be successful.

I’ll let you know.

Make it a good day.

More on the July Book Blow Out:
from The Book Stacks: Where’s Your Book Set? Meme and Book BlowOut Update.
from Blue Archipelago: Book Review of Matrimony by Josh Henkin.
My Reading List.