If midnight is the witching hour, 5 a.m. is the musing hour

I've spent the past two or so hours reading. Not the hurried gulping of leisure reading, but the careful consumption of academic reading that is like wine-tasting. It's reading with a pencil and a highlighter and sticky flags to mark important passages, active instead of passive. Reading with a higher seriousness of intent.

I'm reading Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick, or, I should say, rereading it, in preparation for writing the first part of my thesis, on Gornick's ultimate goal in writing her memoir: to separate herself from her mother, to define herself as her mother's opposite. It seems simplistic, until you read her memoir and see that Gornick does not fully perceive her goal and instead sees herself in some ways as her mother's echo. It's a complicated relationship that can't be fully sussed out by my pencil and half-coherent marginalia. I could go on, but this is not my point. My point is that there's a deep satisfaction in this sort of reading, even down to the physicality of it—arranging myself so my right hand is free for note-taking, holding the thin paperback so that I can both read and write. It's precise yet automatic, facilitating thought and reflection.

I wonder sometimes if I will be able to go back to mindless pleasure reading, simply ripping through a novel or memoir without considering deeper themes or subtle motifs. I wonder if I want to.