All appearances to the contrary so far, I have a very specific reading project in mind for this year: to abjure prose fiction in favour of non-fiction. There's a loophole there, obviously, for graphic novels, and, i hope, a few short stories here and there, but now i have the massive tomes of Absolute Sandman consumed, it should be primarily non-fiction, along with a few collections of myth and folklore for research, from here on out.

I'm so very bad at reading non-fiction. No matter how fascinated I am by a subject, no matter how well-written, my brain resists it the way I used to resist diving into the cold waters of the Atlantic on summer holidays. by the sea. So I'm going to spend most of the year retraining my brain and getting it used to the change in temperature. I may slacken a bot round September, we'll see how it goes.

Take this little book for example. A mere 163 pages, very well written, very insightful, and it took me four or five days to read the damn thing, and that wasn't because I was constantly fast in the pages of Morpheus. But I did it, a minor triumph. Perhaps some of the strength I gained from completing it can be put to use in her lessons about how to cultivate a writer's disposition and overcome a reluctance to write? We'll see. An excellent book, that addresses head on not craft or style but some suggested ways of, as the title says, becoming a writer. Its dated references don't detract from the sensible and level-headed and practical advice about the the cultivation of your own genius, so if you're having difficulty knuckling down this might be a useful, gentle, kick in the pants.

Anyway, wish me luck for the rest of my non-fiction reading project. I may need it.