Blog of Magic Cheese

I've been on a non-fiction kick for a while, and I don't remember when it started. One day I looked on my shelves and instead of science fiction and fantasy books it was stocked with documentaries, history books, and social sciences, heavy tomes with scary covers that could bludgeon a man to death.

The last fiction I recall reading was King Lear, and while it was fantastic, it was less what you would call light reading and more horrified entrancement with intermittent weeping. This is one of the signs that you should be an English or Theatre major, by the way.

The latest book I'm going through, Strangers From a Different Shore, is very good, but it's 500 pages and it's going to take me forever. It's a history of Asian American immigration to the United States and it's been a fascinating study in self as well as history as I turn the chapters and go from pride in the literacy rate and success of the Japanese American immigrants to horror when I read about the conditions that Korean Americans came to the U.S. to escape during the Japanese occupation. After that I've got another killer in the queue, Tulia, which will probably take me 6 months to a year to finish.

I'm not sure if I'm slowing down as I've grown up or if the books I read now are way denser than what I used to read. I do know that after I read 15-30 pages now I need to stop and put down the book and digest what I've read for the day, much in the way I know when I've hit the limit of new moves I can learn to a wushu form, or how I have to stop albums in the middle to back off and let what they're saying sink in.

Is this a common symptom of growing up, or is it encroaching senility?

I know the non-fiction's going to take a break when George releases his fifth book, so I'll be conducting a test then.