Appetizers

At the start of a regular regime of reading during leisure time (or other time that hasn't been planned for some specific activity) it is useful to view this as the forming of a new habit.  The obvious question then is this. What can you do to make the behavior stick, so it does indeed become a habit?  Conversely, what behavior will encourage you to give up too early?  Of course, the answer may depend on attributes specific to you; you may differ from others that way.  Let us try to focus on behaviors that are quite common and you can be the judge whether these apply to you. To aid the discussion, let us distinguish a "plunge right in" approach from a "lots of small steps" approach.  I will focus mainly on one issue here - procrastination.  We all procrastinate from time to time, primarily in certain tasks that we find uncomfortable in some way.  Which approach will make you procrastinate less with reading during leisure time?

I subscribe to the lots of small steps approach.  Here's why.  Each step seems not so difficult, so you're apt to complete it once you've gotten started with it.  Even if in the middle of the step you find some blockage that makes you want to stop, you can already see the finish line so can put in the necessary effort to complete the race.  And if you do have success of this sort with the early steps, then you likely have built up some confidence that you can complete subsequent steps.  

Now I want to add a wrinkle that might not be obvious in prospect, but certainly should be evident in retrospect.  If you are taking a step, are you more likely to complete it if it is work or if it is play?  

For our small steps we will begin with short stories, most that were written to entertain the reader - pleasure reading, if you will.  What gives you pleasure this way may change over time, but let's begin with some short stories that have appealed to a broad audience.  Mainly, our appetizers have been selected from that set of short stories.  

A Bit of Reflection Now and Then

After reading two or three of these, you might take some time to consider questions: (a) about what you have read, (b) about how the reading went for you, and (c) anything else where the reading piques your interest.  The reading suggestions have been deliberately chosen to be from the past, some from more than 100 years ago.  Nonetheless, does the story somehow connect to the present, either to you personally or to the events of our time?  Are you able to make a mental image of what the protagonist in the story describes? If so, does doing that give some sense of traveling, geographically and temporally?  Once you started in the reading, were you absorbed by it or did you check your phone/laptop for messages in the midst of the story?  Did you force yourself to complete reading or was it enjoyable to do near the end?  

At this point, I suggest trying to keep the reflection light, so don't feel obligated to write something about your reflections.  (That would make the steps larger than they should be at the beginning.)  We'll talk about this again when reading some non-fiction essays.  Let me note one other thing here.  It would be good to know whether you found the stories readable, a bit challenging, or too difficult.  Some of the longer pieces listed at the end might be in the challenging category.  I intended that with their selection.

Selected Short Stories:

The Lady, or the Tiger by Frank R. Stockton
I like this story because it offers a puzzle, but not one that is logical, rather one that requires projecting the internal views of another character in the story.  We're often told to walk in someone else's shoes.  Can we really do that?  Stockton wrote a sequel called The Discourager of Hesitancy.  If you liked the story, you might try that as well. 

The Ransom of Red Chief by O. Henry
The story is humorous in an ironic way.  It is an example of the phrase - the best laid plans can go astray.  They certainly do in this story.  It also gives a particular setting for considering the following proposition.  We tend to be optimistic when we initiate a project, but then we must be realistic when we manage it.

The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe
This is not Poe's best known short story.  I chose it because it is an example of detective/mystery fiction.  The story offers clues about what is actually going on.  Can you take those clues and figure it out for yourself?  Indeed, this story was the first of the genre, written before Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie about Hercule Poirot, and many other very entertaining and compelling story tellers wrote mystery fiction.  For us, making good meaning of a story, fiction or non-fiction, is a big deal.  In that sense everything we'll be reading is a mystery, for us to make sense out of it.

The Enchanted Bluff by Willa Cather
What parts of childhood stay with us as we become adults?  Are our hopes shaped by the stories we heard as kids?  This is a delightful story that illustrates how that might happen.  A good part of it is describing the Midwest outdoors from the perspective of kids.  There is a certain enchantment in their perspective.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber
Is daydreaming pure escapism? Or is it a necessary part of the creative process?  Why is it that when we star in our own daydreams we are seemingly heroes, though we are not heroes in our own day to day reality.  This is probably Thurber's best known work, though he was also quite well known for his illustrations that accompanied many of his stories. 

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
Surprise is a key element of many stories. It wakes the reader up to possibilities not previously considered, but more than that, it strongly suggests that we should not lock ourselves into our initial assumptions and must stay open to alternative possibilities.  If you read through The Lottery a second time, you will see that Jackson makes no attempt to hide the surprise.  It is we readers who inadvertently do that, by our implicit assumptions we make at the outset of the story.

Somewhat Longer and More Somber Stories:

Bartleby, The Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street by Herman Melville (Because the Web version at the link didn't have margins, I copied it into Word and posted it here.)
Each of these longer stories is full of angst, a word that seemingly should be part of the working vocabulary of most college students, as they too are going through difficult times as of late.  Bartleby is in a somewhat different circumstance than current college students, but maybe the similarities still are evident.  Melville, of course, is most well known for Moby Dick, a very long but quite a good read.  This is his best piece of shorter fiction. 

Sonny's Blues by James Baldwin
The story is from the early 1950s (before Brown v. Board of Education) and describes life in Harlem as well as how an older brother hurts for his younger sibling, who has gotten hooked on heroin, only to detox some and find his true calling, making music.  That music gives meaning to those who suffer so is something we all should reflect upon.  I wondered reading this whether things were much different then or if mostly they are still the same.

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
This is one of Kafka's most famous stories.  He tends to write in abstractions, in this case the protagonist turns into a cockroach, and it is the reader's job to understand what the abstraction affords the writer and what the writer expects the reader to take from that.  As I was trained in economic theory, I'm prone to think in an abstract manner.  As a general statement, abstractions get one to focus on a few particulars, while ignoring many others.   Some people have a taste for this sort of thing.  Others might be put off by it.  Let me note one other thing about this particular translation.  There are several small errors/typos.  It shouldn't block your ability to read the piece, but you might have to reread a sentence or two to make sure you are getting the meaning.