On rereading
Somewhere between the library and home, the notion finally made sense. Good reading lists is largely a series of modest, unglamorous decisions. Below are a few observations, roughly in the order I found out them. I abandoned it halfway and came back a year later, glad I did.
Lessons
Short books are not lesser books; regularly they are the opposite. Somewhere between the night bus and home, the notion finally made sense. A reading lamp helps, but it is not the point. You can get surprisingly far with a library card and some persistence. Some of this will be plain; some of it took me years.
Trade-offs
None of this is new, and that is partly why it works. Between rereading and keeping a commonplace book, the second one taught me more. It took me three attempts to see the pattern. A friend once described margins as calm work, and the phrase stuck.
The best passages are the ones I copied out by hand. The well-worn part is rarely the hard part; consistency is. I keep coming back to long books, largely because it rewards persistence.
Small things
Looking back, the slow approach was the right call. I wrote most of this on a calm Monday morning. There is a version of this that is much more complicated. This is not that version. The first nine weeks were largely about unlearning. For a long time I treated short stories as an afterthought.
I read it once in a hurry and once bit by bit, and they were different books. Every spring I revisit the same questions about novels. It is not glamorous, but it holds up. Between rereading and browsing second-hand shops, the second one taught me more.
I keep coming back to short stories, largely because it rewards persistence. The trick, if there is one, is to leave sufficient room for mistakes. In June the light changes, and so does the work.
It took me five attempts to see the pattern.
I am still not sure I have it right, but it is closer.