I’m currently reading The Sentence by Louise Erdrich, in which a bookish character says she keeps two stacks of books by her bed: a “dumb” stack and a “smart” stack. Depending on her level of mental acuity when she gets in bed at night, she chooses a book from one stack or another. I think it’s brilliant. I plan to adopt this approach in 2025!
That is a brilliant idea indeed! I love it and am so glad you shared it. I need to start letting myself have a "dumb" stack. I admittedly put all of my focus on the "smart" stack. But I think it ends up being a deterrent late at night, when I'm exhausted and don't have much mental energy left.
Let’s both try and it and check in later! I think we get to define “dumb” and “smart” however we want to. I’m curious to see what ends up in my piles. Pretty sure it’s not going to have anything to do with intelligence, more to do with the density of the writing (and possibly the font size and spacing).
I loved The Comfort of Crows! It’s a great one to start this month, as it begins with the first week of winter. I kept up with it through the year/seasons and it was such a lovely, low-pressure way to read it.
I’m currently reading The Sentence by Louise Erdrich, in which a bookish character says she keeps two stacks of books by her bed: a “dumb” stack and a “smart” stack. Depending on her level of mental acuity when she gets in bed at night, she chooses a book from one stack or another. I think it’s brilliant. I plan to adopt this approach in 2025!
That is a brilliant idea indeed! I love it and am so glad you shared it. I need to start letting myself have a "dumb" stack. I admittedly put all of my focus on the "smart" stack. But I think it ends up being a deterrent late at night, when I'm exhausted and don't have much mental energy left.
Let’s both try and it and check in later! I think we get to define “dumb” and “smart” however we want to. I’m curious to see what ends up in my piles. Pretty sure it’s not going to have anything to do with intelligence, more to do with the density of the writing (and possibly the font size and spacing).
I loved The Comfort of Crows! It’s a great one to start this month, as it begins with the first week of winter. I kept up with it through the year/seasons and it was such a lovely, low-pressure way to read it.
That's great, Katie! I'll put that one toward the top of my list. :)