The hard part about reading books on an iPhone is not being distracted by all the other things an iPhone can do: surf, play games, track my finances or calories, text or email my friends, tweet, etc. etc.
In fact, I’m beginning to think that having an iPhone with me all the time has done serious damage to my ability to focus on anything for any length of time; only one of those consequences is losing the ability to read anything longer than a blog post. Another consequence is losing the ability to write anything longer than a few paragraphs.
This explains, I believe, my lack of blogging.
So I’m retraining myself in how to read, and how to write. This blog will hopefully be a training ground for me, to get my focus back into shape.
At the moment, I’m reading Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars, the first novel in the John Carter of Mars series. Turn of the century (last century, mind you) romances about a Southern gentleman of Virginia transported to a fantastic Mars populated with fearsome four-armed green Martians, and sexy Dejah Thoris, a beautiful human-appearing red Martian. Such fun! Adventure and a nearly-chaste romance, it’s the typical White Male American Shows Those Savages A Thing Or Two story (see Dances With Wolves or Avatar for more modern tellings of the story).
And even as simple as the story is, it’s taking a lot of effort for me to read it.
I hope to get better at it as I go; I’ve started stockpiling books again, so I have a pile of them to read. Just like I used to. Stay tuned!
