branta

I like to read. I need to read. But I’ve got shit to do.

I deal with this by multitasking, maybe because I’m female or maybe because I have a short attention span. Accordingly, I would like to present to you my list of suggestions of things to read while doing shit.

Action: Reading aloud to your significant other because s/he can’t sleep and you just want to get some reading done, damn it, but you can’t just stick your head in a book because s/he keeps turning over in bed and stealing the covers.
Do Read: At Large And At Small: Familiar Essays by Anne Fadiman. Essays on ice-cream, Arctic explorers, coffee, and moving house: something for everyone. There’s even an essay on sleeping.
Don’t Read: Erotica. Either you’ll both wake yourselves up again, or you’ll have distracting dreams.

Action: Hiding in the bathroom at a family party because there are no more words to explain why you’re still single or why you don’t have a proper job or why you’ve styled your hair in that funny way.
Do Read: If you like your family then read Bad Science by Ben Goldacre for something interesting to start a debate about; if you don’t like your family then read Maggots, Murder and Men by Dr Zakaria Erzinclioglu for tips on how to dispose of the bodies.
Don’t Read: Sartre, Baudelaire, de Sade, or anything else that will cause you to make grandiose statements or stare numbly at the walls. Families hate that.

Action: Sitting at the train station waiting for a train that is always late (except for the days when you sleep in and arrive late to the station – those days, it’s early).
Do Read: Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh, or Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith, or Stranger on a Train: Daydreaming and Smoking Around America by Jenny Diski (my personal favourite), or Mr. Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood, or… OK, no more train books.
Don’t Read: 1,000-page hardbacks – you’ll regret it when there are no empty seats on the train and you have to hold that sucker in your arms for the whole journey.

Action: Being bored at the salon because you’re getting your hair cut by a student hairdresser, which is cheap but takes two hours because they’re so nervous about making horrible mistake that they cut each hair individually.
Do Read: The Mist in the Mirror by Susan Hill to transport you to snowier and more fanciful places; anything from Salt’s poetry collection to get yourself too tangled up in words to care about anything else.
Don’t Read: The History of Lesbian Hair by Mary Dugger – the hairdresser might get confused and give you a mullet.

Action: Walking home after a 9-hour waitressing shift down long streetlit pavements.
Do Read: Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto by Chuck Klosterman. It’s interesting enough to be absorbing, but not so intellectual that you’ll forget to look before you cross the road. Or Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell to remind yourself that minimum-wage jobs have always been crappy.
Don’t Read: True crime. You’ll only scare yourself.

Action: Having a bath with bubbles and face-masks and candles and blow-up neck pillows and all that paraphernalia that women always have around them in cosmetic adverts.
Do Read: Poems 1957-1978 by Leonard Cohen because it’s wandering and self-obsessed and maybe because it reminds you of your father; or Standing Female Nude by Carol Ann Duffy because it shows how anger and love and beauty can work together very nicely indeed.
Don’t Read: Good novels, because you will become engrossed and let the water get cold and your feet will be uncomfortably wrinkled.

Action: Killing time during the advert break of a trashy crime drama.
Do Read: If you have your laptop, read FRiGG’s Law & Order issue; if you don’t, read The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter because it goes very well with crime drama. Trust me.
Don’t Read: Non-fiction about forensics, because then you will realise that the premise of the episode is impossible.

Action: Walking in the park on a bright and snowy morning.
Do Read: You can’t read, exactly, because then you’ll trip over twigs and ducks. So listen to Indiefeed’s Performance Poetry podcast instead, and you can absorb poetry straight into your eardrums. I particularly recommend Emilie Zoe Baker’s Wet and Alix Olson’s Eve’s Mouth.
Don’t Read: Things with pages.

###