Piecemeal

 

I’ve realized recently that I stream films and TV shows by using the same technique I use while reading books: piecemeal.*

Right now, for example, I’m reading seven books simultaneously (some via Kindle) at various locations around the house: Richard Osman’s The Man Who Died Twice, Jane Austen’s Emma, Tim Gautreaux’s The Missing, The Complete Poems of E. E. Cummings, Scott Turow’s The Last Trial, Ben Aaronovitch’s Moon Over Soho, and John Grisham’s The Rooster Bar.

I employ the same hop-skip-and-jump approach to the streaming we do at the end of the day when all we want is an hour’s entertainment ere we drop off to sleep. Right now we are watching bits of Ken Burns’ documentary about Muhammad Ali, Jack Irish, Fresh Off the Boat (we’re watching only because Joyce knows the actor who plays the next-door neighbor, Ray Wise: They acted in high school plays together), Hinterland, Schitt’s Creek (second time through), and The Cafe (second time through). 

We try to end the night with lighter fare.

I’ll confess that Joyce is not all that crazy about this streaming technique, but since I am the only one who’s bothered to learn how to use the remotes ...!

I’m not sure what all this piecemeal reading and viewing mean. Is my attention span fracturing? Am I trying to get as much in me before ... you know?

I don’t know. I know only that this is the way I function now.

When I was younger, I never read/viewed like this. I didn’t read much in high school (I was too busy preparing for my career as the catcher for the Yankees, the point guard for the Celtics). Oddly, though, bored in high school study hall (I had four in a row my senior year), I read Moby-Dick and Jack London’s Martin Eden—little did I know how his career would later consume me for about a decade!

And I had to watch TV shows all the way through because there were no recorders then—no Internet, obviously.

As a younger kid, I did read a lot more—Westerns mostly. Kids’ biographies of notable Westerners.

My mom was a big reader—read a lot until she no longer could.

Dad was less obsessive about it, but he did all right. He read enough to snort at my high-school reading patterns, such as they were.

My older and younger brothers both read far more than I did. Both ended up at Harvard. Both still read a lot.

Anyway, here I am, forever catching up, forever making up for those years lost in dreams of athletic fame.

And I’m having the Best Damn Time!

*piecemeal = made from two words that mean “in pieces” and “by a fixed measure.” Or at least that’s what the OED says!