My post-TV season life should, no, will involve reading

What kind of bookish penguin doesn't write about books all the time?  This slacker, TV addict.

Now that the majority of shows have had their season finales, I find myself with a lot of extra weeknight hours.  Granted, this will only last this week, for now, because for the month of June I'm teaching four nights a week (Monday through Thursday) from 6pm to 8:30pm (and this is after a full 9am-5pm workday). But, for this lovely, shortened workweek, I have oodles of free time.  Sure, I have to finalize my syllabus for next week and also work on my syllabus for August (I will be teaching for three weeks in August, four nights a week, from 6pm to 9:20pm - goodbye free time), but for now I get to... what?  Read?  Write?  Talk a long walk with Oreo?  Perhaps.  I just want to make sure I don't spend this week sitting in front of the television like a drone, which is my default behavior. 

I absolutely adore television, but too much so that when this time of year comes, I actually feel a bit freed. I am trying to read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon but I'm having a hard time getting into it.  Perhaps tonight I will sit down and give it a really fair shake.  I think I associate sitting at home and reading with grad school work and that's why I find it so hard to do.  If I took the book to a coffee shop, I could probably sit there and read the book in a couple of hours. 

Unfortunately, there's our old nemesis again, the required retail experience.  (I have a major issue with how everything these days seems to require some sort of retail purchase, but I have to ponder the idea a bit more before I can write something cohesive about it.) One book I had a hard time getting into a long time ago was Atonement by Ian McEwan, but on the advising of several undergrad classmates, I stuck with it.  The first half of the book probably took me two weeks to get through - and then the second half took me less than two hours, probably.  It was entirely worth the work and the wait.  I'm hoping The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is somewhat similar, although I don't want to get half way through the book before I start enjoying it.  We'll see.  I promise to get on it and report back!

Two books have defeated me before: On the Road by Jack Kerouac and Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. I don't know what it is about On the Road that irritates me so, but it does.  I just cannot get past the first 25-30 pages, despite having tried three times.  I know I'll try a fourth time and now, as a better, more accomplished and skilled reader, perhaps I shall succeed at it. Clocking in at over 1100 pages, (no, that is not a typo), I saw Infinite Jest as a challenge for bragging rights.  An extremely lengthy and difficult read?  Bring it on!  About 30-5o pages later, I gave up.  I think I still have the book around somewhere.  Maybe one day I will still get to it.

For now, though, I'm going after that curious dog night time incident thing.  And probably still watching too much television.