…mostly that I don’t do it enough.
I’m about 20 pages from the end on Samuel Delany’s Babel-17 novel, and I have to confess that I don’t entirely get it, but I’m enjoying it quite throughly. I’m also, thankfully not worried about groking it in its fullest. This is a book that I expect to reread a number of times, and a book that I think will add an interesting dimension to a class discussion about linguistic relativism, so I suspect I’ll get plenty of chances to revisit this text.
Despite my failure to grok the book entirely it’s been a good learning experience. Delany is a great writer. Really great. At the same time, this is a pretty structurally straightforward book, and there isn’t literary experimentalism to get in the way of the plot or the characters, and that’s the way I like it. That’s what I like so much about science fiction.
Anyway, I really like reading, and particularly at times like this, where I’m sort of scattered brained and dealing with a lot of demands on my time and energy reading fiction can be really good for getting focus and inspiration back, when the getting seems hard. It’s a shame, then, that I don’t read nearly as much as I might like to. It always seems like the internet or knitting or writing or spinning or academic work gets in the way, but that’s foolish. Really foolish.
After I finish this Delany, I have a Tiptree to read, but it might be time to read a more recent Melissa Scott book. We shall see what I grab for.