I hope that I am not alone in this, but in my readings (and I think I have already admitted to a lot of reading) I have a tendency to research outside of the novel. I once spent two weeks in two different university's libraries researching 13th-14th century European monastic life in conjuction with my reading of The Name of the Rose. Not kidding. Two weeks. I had finished the book long before I finished my curiousity.
I find I can more easily gather info on most things online now (thankfully), but I still have the habit. I just read a silly mystery by Elizabeth Peters from her Amelia Peabody series which takes place in Egypt at the turn of the last century. Naturally I've been online now for three hours reading about Thebes, Giza, English occupation of Egypt, French administration of "antiquities," etc. I can't read a book that is set anywhere without researching that location. I have been all over the United States, Australia, England, France, Portugal, Italy, the Balkans, Turkey, Jerusalem, Vietnam, Japan....
I'm sure this is some minor variant of obsessive-compulsive disorder: I'm researching and I can't stop!
Other people do this, right?
I find I can more easily gather info on most things online now (thankfully), but I still have the habit. I just read a silly mystery by Elizabeth Peters from her Amelia Peabody series which takes place in Egypt at the turn of the last century. Naturally I've been online now for three hours reading about Thebes, Giza, English occupation of Egypt, French administration of "antiquities," etc. I can't read a book that is set anywhere without researching that location. I have been all over the United States, Australia, England, France, Portugal, Italy, the Balkans, Turkey, Jerusalem, Vietnam, Japan....
I'm sure this is some minor variant of obsessive-compulsive disorder: I'm researching and I can't stop!
Other people do this, right?
1 comment:
For a while I got in the habit of seeing Broadway musicals and then ruining them by reading the sources and getting all worked up about how historically inaccurate they were. I ruined Barnum by reading a bio and his autobiography, Gypsy by reading Gypsy Rose Lee's memoirs, and 1776 by reading a couple of cool American history books.
Word verification: vulzhpva. Fake definition: a Russian chair used by aristocrats in Czarist times, designed specifically to be carried across rivers by indentured serfs.
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