My New Project

My new project is one that will take some time to accomplish: I'm reading a book upside down.

I had read that reading a book upside down was a "brain game" so I decided to give it a try. I browsed through my books looking for a font that would be easy to read upside down, but all my books had the same size printing. I selected 'The Stranger' by Albert Camus, a translation from the French by Mathew Ward and began reading, but it wasn't long before I decided it would be better as a beginning upside down reader, to choose something a bit lighter.

After sorting through the books, I picked an Alexander McCall Smith book, 'In The Company Of Cheerful Ladies' which is a charming book with engaging characters, and one of his series about 'The NO. 1 Ladies Detective Agency'. We are so practiced in reading that we intuitively understand meanings of words and sentences without checking the dictionary, but in reading upside down, I often have to spell out a word in order to decipher it and know its pronunciation.. Consequently, I can't anticipate the next word in a sentence. I also have to pay attention to punctuation in order to keep the thread of the story making sense.

Its slow going and it will be some time before I can sail through the pages like I do reading right side up. It will be a while before I actually finish chapter 1... and there are 21 chapters total. I'll update my progress from time to time.