Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

A New Way to Read, Part II (Part I Here)

Armed with my photocopied instructions from The Well-Educated Mind by Susan Wise Bauer, a spiral notebook, and my copy of Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier, I set off to edify myself. Or at least appreciate what I was reading more than I could when I zipped through books as fast as I could.

I started out strong. As I read each chapter of Cold Mountain, I thought about the images, what they represented, and what the characters represented. I copied entire quotes into my spiral notebook. I noted particular details if I thought they might become important. And at the end of each chapter, I wrote a brief summary of the events that occurred.

It turned out that Cold Mountain was very conducive to this type of note-taking because each chapter alternates its point of view between the two main characters, Inman and Ada. In that way, the writing was episodic. I was able to work on one chapter at a time and then leave the book to do or read something else. I also noticed that when this happened and I returned to the book after a few days, I had no trouble recalling what had happened so far, or who the characters were. This was already a great improvement on my reading in the past, when I couldn’t read more than one book at a time, or take too long of a break between reading spurts without completely losing track of what happened.

However, as Inman’s journey wore on, I too began to lose steam. I would set down the book for longer and longer periods. The prospect of having to take notes and synthesize thoughts became something I dreaded, and I would find excuses to read something else, or not read at all. Before I knew it, I had stalled about three quarters of the way through the book and it had been months since I last picked it up.

Still, I hate to leave a book unfinished if I’ve gotten that far, so I finally decided that if it was the note-taking that was preventing me from reading Cold Mountain at all, it just wasn’t worth it. Maybe Cold Mountain wasn’t the best choice for note-taking anyway. Maybe the reason I lost interest was that there just wasn’t that much in it to note. So I allowed myself to abandon the plan and just finished the book without worrying about it.

In the end, I’m not sure whether I enjoyed the book more or less because of the extra baggage I imposed upon it. I certainly remember the beginning better than I otherwise would have, but I also don’t feel like I got particularly much out of it.

I am not ready to abandon Susan Wise Bauer altogether, however. My next attempt will be at something that is obviously more difficult both in terms of plot, character, and literary depth. How about Thomas Pynchon’s V?

Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

Tags: Well-Educated Mind taking notes Charles Frazier