Anyone who thinks that discipline has no place in our pleasures and our leisure has no experience of its true operation. Undisciplined pleasure quickly becomes nothing of pleasure while retaining all of its undisciplined character. Unending sweets first please, then pall and finally sicken. Long vacations are initially relaxing, then dull and in the end, unendurable. Just so, unfocused and undisciplined reading becomes distracted, scattered and profitless. Like a petulant gourmand the reader flits from book to book seeking cheaper and cheaper thrills, the digestion becomes more and more dainty, unwilling and unable to wade through whole strong, meaty works for sustenance and finally seeking the supplement bars and drinks of the literary world – condensed books, books of quotations and anthologized extracts.

Remember that I am trying to write a book.

Also to help plan and prepare a wedding.

And I’ve got a part-time job going on.

Also two children, a husband and a home to keep running…

So I’ve read one book since finishing The Leopard on March 10th. Pathetic. I know. It was 100 Cupboards by ND Wilson and I read it in just about a day late last week. It was lovely and charming and well worth the time and money. I highly recommend it. It is a fantasy children’s book that is uniquely American while still reminiscent of all our favorite British fantasy classics. Baum can eat his heart out.

I have also been reading. Not finishing very many books but reading a lot. I read Anne Fadiman’s Ex Libris which was fabulous in so many ways. She defined the difference between carnal lovers of books and courtly lovers of books. I’m definitely courtly (though not as courtly as Brent).

I just finished The Leapord by Giuseppe di Lampedusa which was recommended by my friend Ted. Great book, very unexpected in subtle ways. I love having reliable friends to recommend and loan good reads.

Those are the only two books I’ve finished since I last posted an age ago but I have been reading much more than that. I’ve been reading up on some literary criticism (just got my 2500+ page Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism…Squee!!!) from diverse characters like Lewis, Christopher Hitchens, Peter Leithart and others. I’m a nerd but a happy one.

Oh! And I’m also reading Augustine’s City of God. SO AMAZING. I know Brent is saying I told you so right now but still. Wow! I’m pretty sure that the preface (by Thomas Merton) is right and that all of Western Thought is but a footnote to Augustine.

I’m so glad to live in our day and age though I think that there were definitely some good aspects of daily life then. Yay for modern medicine, yay for good nutrition, yay for showers.

I have not been feeling well the last week or so and so have been very under-productive. I’m also really struggling to get any writing done and beginning to think that I’m going to have to make some major changes if I want to be an author. I’ve tried to get by with once or twice weekly writing sessions and that’s just not working. By the time I do get away with paper and pen my creative energy is just gone. I need not just time to write but time to nurture the mental state necessary to write something worth reading. I think I’m going to have to be ok with being away from my family a little bit more. Maybe three nights a week plus most of Saturday. We’ll see.

I’m still in the middle of three different books despite finishing Father Joe. I just started Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon. the man is smart and precocious and while I find him inspiring I also find him intimidating. My book will be trying to do many of the things he’s already done and done masterfully well. So while he provokes me to deeper thought and corrects some of my thought patterns, I sometimes feel like he’s said it all already and it won’t matter if I break out my pen or not. Sigh.

In home and family news, we have Lucius Colby Patchin growing and changing every day. He is so cute…and I don’t just say that because he looks like me. He now loves to turn light switches on and off, push the empty laundry basket around, ask for jelly beans and do anything his big brother is doing. And Alex is becoming more and more articulate. He still doesn’t speak much but I’m still eagerly awaiting the day he does.

I’ve been trying different strategies for getting some writing done. I take ten minute breaks during the normal day routine and do freewriting excercises to get the juices flowing. Then, when the boys are napping or in bed I can take those ideas and shape them into something more. At least that’s the theory, I don’t have much of a track record yet.

I finished P.G. Wodehouse’s Joy in the Morning last night and, naturally, enjoyed it completely. Jeeves was at his inimitable best and dear Bertram got to pose as a burglar and a policeman. The perilous engagment was deftly avoided and all is well again. My only complaint with the book (and it is true of all of the Jeeves and Wooster stories) is that while the world the characters inhabit is definitley Edwardian, the contemporary references are not. This is occasionally jarring but still a minor quibble.

Alex now says “Daddy” “Owie” and, every toddler’s favorite, “No”. He is also a big fan of “Bee” and “Lion”. I’m still eagerly awaiting fluency.

I’ve gotten a decent reading list together over on the “2009″ page. I will keep adding to it as I stumble across things I want to read but I don’t intend to add anything without seriously meaning to read it this year so at some point I’ll have to stop adding titles. Please feel free to add suggestions in the comments over there.

Does anyone think it is possible to write 2000 (coherent) words a day?

Also, my bookclub will be reading Winifred Watson’s Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day and meeting Thursday January 29th. Let me know if you would like to join us. My email is akpatchin (at) gmail.com

I finished up the last of Naguib Mahfouz’s books Thebes at War and encourage you to get out there and pick up a copy. His Cairo Trilogy was excellent and now his three novels of Ancient Egypt are my list of recommends. They are simply lovely books. I couldn’t put them down…and not just because of some reading goal!

Now I’m trying to get Aesop finished up quickly so I don’t lose it at the dry style and moralizing “Reflections”.

Oh! I almost forgot to mention! This is the day 12 years ago when I first met my little brother. My mom insisted she wasn’t sure if she was really in labor right up until she almost broke my hand squeezing it during contractions. So lucky me got to play “catch” with an incredibly slippery, incredibly precious baby boy. I love you bro!

I’m a little worried about my teenage self. Why did I enjoy the Russian authors so very much? It’s not that I don’t think Crime and Punishment is a good book or worthy of it’s classic status, it’s just so very sad and depressing. Definitely an interesting book, as fascinating for it’s philosophy as for it’s story.

I’ve been working on writing my book proposal and of course keeping up with all three of my blogs and so I’ve been meditating a bit on the writing process. I keep getting stymied with my 200books blog and with my book proposal while the “fun stuff” I post on my other blogs has just been rolling out my fingertips. Every once in a long while I’ll feel a flash of inspiration but when I sit down to work on the book blood starts oozing out of my pores from the stress. I’m overwhelmed by not knowing exactly what I want it to be, not knowing if it will be “good enough” and not knowing if I’ll ever have the time to get it done. But today I’ve felt a little bit of a mental breakthrough. No, I didn’t dash off 50 pages of brilliant prose before breakfast but I had a new thought about how I’m writing it and why.

I got to thinking about the constraints of the project; the busyness, the distractions, the every-day-ness of it all. And I realized that I ought to be writing the book under those conditions. I should stop pining for peace and quiet, stop wishing that I could retreat to compose my “masterpiece” and just take joy in the struggle and see what happens. I may not be working on the biggest break-through in literary criticism this decade but whatever I produce will be a reflection of my life. So living life well is the best preparation for the book I want to write. I want to write about how literature keeps life interesting, how it destroys pettiness and how it beautifies drudgery but if I’m busy trying to escape life then I won’t be much of an authority on that now will I?