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Book problems
Apr. 27th, 2022 12:56 amHad to break a mild hyperfocus today. I'm two-thirds of the way through the final book in a trilogy (all three of which are absolute doorstoppers), and it's been eating up not only my time and attention, but my ability to meaningfully focus on much else, which I want to do. I've got emails I need to respond to, particularly for WisCon!
This is not the first time I've had to break a hyperfocus. Admittedly, the last time I remember doing so was both much more intense but also a much shorter time period, and I still don't dare go near that one again. This one I might have the chops to try again in a few months, when I'm not in the middle of planning several different things.
I think I'm pretty lucky that I can break hyperfocus, or perhaps more importantly, that I can recognize when a hyperfocus is a problem and then go on to break it. I'm going to try shifting my attention to a light novel, and hopefully that'll fix the issue. Probably part of the problem in this case is the sheer length of the books; Amazon tells me that they're collectively around 2500 (digital) pages, and while the paragraphs are double-spaced, that's still a lot of book! Light novels, at least, tend to be somewhat more contained. They tend to average out at more of a tenth that length.
I can at least recommend a different book! "Legends and Lattes" by Travis Baldree. I listened to the entire six-hour-ish audiobook on Sunday, and it was lovely. A relatively short novel about an orc who retires from adventuring to start a coffeeshop in a city that has no idea what coffee is, with some found family and a bit of f/f. It will probably surprise exactly no one that my favorite character is probably Thimble, the (possibly autistic coded) ratkin baker(!!!). Very nice iyashikei vibes (warning, TVTropes linke), generally pretty soothing to listen to/read, but still has a plot. I'm tempted to give it a second listen already.
This is not the first time I've had to break a hyperfocus. Admittedly, the last time I remember doing so was both much more intense but also a much shorter time period, and I still don't dare go near that one again. This one I might have the chops to try again in a few months, when I'm not in the middle of planning several different things.
I think I'm pretty lucky that I can break hyperfocus, or perhaps more importantly, that I can recognize when a hyperfocus is a problem and then go on to break it. I'm going to try shifting my attention to a light novel, and hopefully that'll fix the issue. Probably part of the problem in this case is the sheer length of the books; Amazon tells me that they're collectively around 2500 (digital) pages, and while the paragraphs are double-spaced, that's still a lot of book! Light novels, at least, tend to be somewhat more contained. They tend to average out at more of a tenth that length.
I can at least recommend a different book! "Legends and Lattes" by Travis Baldree. I listened to the entire six-hour-ish audiobook on Sunday, and it was lovely. A relatively short novel about an orc who retires from adventuring to start a coffeeshop in a city that has no idea what coffee is, with some found family and a bit of f/f. It will probably surprise exactly no one that my favorite character is probably Thimble, the (possibly autistic coded) ratkin baker(!!!). Very nice iyashikei vibes (warning, TVTropes linke), generally pretty soothing to listen to/read, but still has a plot. I'm tempted to give it a second listen already.
