Back to Books at Last! I’ve been in the fortunate position for a while now to have a pile of books to read. I hate being stuck without something to read. At a stretch I’ll settle for an audiobook or podcast (or a documentary on my iPod). Preferably though, I like a book. That said, over the last six months, my reading has hit a very, very slow patch.
Some of this has been due to watching The Long Way Round, Long Way Down and Race to Dakar on my iPod, some due to watching Bleach, but generally, after those things, I just haven’t had much time.
The book currently in progress is something a bit unusual for me, and a bit ironic given the time I’ve been reading through it: Dave Allen’s “Getting Things Done”. My inability to finish it, is partly due to the above reasons, but also because it’s so good, I find myself already delving back into the one hundred and twenty pages I’ve already read to re-read bits. In case you didn’t guess, it’s all about getting organised and focused. Something I need to badly do at work and personally. More than that, I think some of this stuff might actually work.
I have my general reading list of things I want to get though in an order which will give me a bit of variety. However, a book arrived this week (kindly bought by my wife), which has jumped the queue to be my next read book: Jupiter’s Travels. This, as it notes on the new printing’s front page, is the book which inspired The Long Way Round. In fact, they bump into the author, Ted Simon, in Mongolia I think. He’s only on screen for a minute or two, but his brief voice over was enough for me to track his website down and put the book on my Xmas list:
“I think the motorcycle is best because it puts you so much in contact with everything. You experience, much more closely, the nature of the terrain, you can almost taste the cultures that you’re riding through. Because it exposes you to the climate, to the wind and rain, it’s a much more complete experience.”
“I think the motorcycle is best because it puts you so much in contact with everything. You experience, much more closely, the nature of the terrain, you can almost taste the cultures that you’re riding through. Because it exposes you to the climate, to the wind and rain, it’s a much more complete experience.”
Essentially, Ted rode around the world in the seventies for four years, then aged in his mid forties. Then in 2001, he did it again for three years at the age of almost seventy. The book is a journal from that first trip, and I’m really, really looking forward to getting stuck into it.