Mental Challenges

The bookcases are falling, in both a physical and metaphorical sense. Waterstones, one of Britain’s leading book retailers has been forced the close a large proportion of their stores due to a recent dip in sales. Why is this? Amazon. Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, there’s hundreds of them and they’re all putting these atmospheric little book hoardings out of business with their ridiculously cheap prices and lack of travel-time. For example, I recently purchased Leo Tolstoy’s Russian epic ‘War and Peace’ off of Amazon for a mere two English pounds. You heard right, 994 pages of classic 19th century literature for £2. The point of this block of motionless jumbo is not to rant at Amazon for their fantastically small prices, no all of that (^) was the set up for precisely why I bought ‘War and Peace’. 

It’s easy enough to set yourself a challenge, a target, an objective, whatever you want to call it. But to set a reliable challenge, well that’s pretty hard. I personally find myself setting myself little goals and recording them in a nice long list (arranged neatly with my other lists). This prevents boredom and eventually leads to happiness, or so I’ve been told. Having completed several of these goals, I eventually reached the more… silly ones. And sure as hell “Read ‘War and Peace’” was written there in black and white. But on first glimpse, I thought nothing of it, instead passing over to the line “See ‘The Graduate’” instead (which, by the way, is a fantastic movie). It was not until last week, which I re-discovered this goal after a rather interesting trip through Amazon’s book market. Thousands of classics which I’d always seen myself reading at some point in life, all of which priced at £2. I couldn’t help myself and so, almost as a joke, me and a friend both purchased the biggest, thickest and most pretentious of the pile, which happened to be ‘War and Peace’. 

The book arrived today, classical war portrait cover, blurb blotted with eager and over-indulgent spiel about “Tolstoy’s views on history”. All 994 pages staring me in the face and yet I cannot for the life of me be bothered to raise a finger and turn the first page. It’s my brain, it immediately shuts down at even the thought of such a monstrous act of boredom. This is not only representative of the ‘War and Peace’ debacle, but many others in tail. My quest to finally see ‘Citizen Kane’ has not yet ended, nor has my recent urge to use a typewriter. These goals which seem simple enough, and require little thought always end up being sidelined for no particular reason. Maybe it’s just me, who knows, but this idea of setting myself tasks has exploded within myself. Meaning revision is impossible. Meaning exams equals failure. 

Will I ever get round to seeing ‘Citizen Kane’? Yes. Will I ever use a typewriter? Most certainly. Will I ever finish ‘War and Peace’? Erm… I’ll get back to you.