I just finished the very good and interesting, but also very long, book The Wizard of the Crow (750+ pages) and of course now I'm looking for the next book to read. I got my copy of Sacred Games and of course I want to read that next but it's 900 pages. I've always been in the habit of sort-of cleansing my palate in between big or tough books with a short paperback, usually some science fiction that won't tax my mind. It's a weird practice, but I went through a phase where I read the last page of everything I read first so I'm used to my eccentricities. The rub comes with my 2007 goal of doing an autodidact literature "class" for myself by using my website [Unreads.com](http://www.unreads.com) to deeply read and really study a bunch of classics. I listened to a couple of audio courses from The Learning Company (everything they have by [Arnold Weinstein](http://www.teach12.com/store/professor.asp?ID=81), my new personal learning guru, and Books That Have Made History) and bought a bunch of the books. Those courses were an incredibly enlightening experience I'll post on more later, they're very much recommended. So I've painted myself into a corner by wanting to cleanse my palate but also not wanting to waste any reading time with fluff. My compromise is that I brought my collection of Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays to get in some of my "studying" without having to commit to a whole book while Sacred Games is beckoning to me. Being a reader is fraught with problems, I tell you. :)

[tags]reading,books,sacred+games,the+learning+company,literature[/tags]