reading

One of the 15 different books I'm currently half-reading is Wanderlust: A History of Walking, by Rebecca Solnit. I've just started, but already I have to quote a few passages for you:

Many people nowadays live in a series of interiors -- home, car, gym, office, shops -- disconnected from each other. On foot everything stays connected, for while walking one occupies the spaces between those interiors in the same way one occupies those interiors. One lives in the whole world rather than in interiors built up against it.

Nice, right? Here's another one:

As a member of the self-employed whose time saved by technology can be lavished on daydreams and meanders, I know these things have their uses, and use them -- a truck, a computer, a modem -- myself, but I fear their false urgency, their call to speed, their insistence that travel is less important than arrival. I like walking because it is slow, and I suspect that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour. If this is so, then modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought, or thoughtfulness.

Of course, there is such a thing as too slow. This time of year I have a huge appetite for reading, but I read so slowly, it's agonizing. And I sleep too much. Can't get anything done. I just keep making lists of new books I want to read. :)