I don’t read enough books. I’m addicted to my computer and spend way too many hours sucked into its grips. From news articles, to blogs, to twitter, to email … There is so much stuff out there, it’s so easy to get carried away. I would say I’m a bit addicted to learning (or just sucking in new information in general), so I definitely get a huge kick out of this ritual of sitting with my computer in the evenings and just reading until my eyes are too tired to stay open.
But this isn’t really down time. I’ve found that I’m not sleeping well enough and I think my quality of life could be better and more balanced. Tough I do thorough enjoy stuffing my brain constantly, I’m not sure that it’s the healthiest thing. And though I’m not big on the whole New Year’s resolution thing, over winter break, I did give a lot of thought into how I could get to a healthier me.
When I think back to what downtime used to mean to me, it was filled with movies, reading, some TV, etc. I don’t do a lot of any of the above anymore, though. So in an effort to make things easier for myself, I decided to start with reading on my iPad. Let me make a correction to that – reading a BOOK on my iPad. I decided to start with a classic, free in the iBooks store. I loved what I’ve read of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky and have always wanted to read The Brothers Karamazov, but keeping all of the names straight has always been the most challenging part of (what I’ve read of) Russian literature! So I
began reading and discovered how easy it is to highlight, make a note of the character’s name, and then find all of those notes from the table of contents in iBooks. But as I was clicking around, I found the search button. I clicked on a character’s name I had forgotten, hit the search button, and boom – the first hit brought me right to the character’s description! So now I’m reading the book and keeping all of the names straight with my handy search button. Perfect. And holding the book open has always felt like a pain in the butt, so I’m definitely enjoying the added perk of only having to prop up the iPad and read away. I particularly like changing the theme to the white text on black a background and dimming the brightness when reading in bed at night.
Here’s to much more happy reading!
techieMusings 