Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Reading is one of my all-time favourite activities and something I have rediscovered recently. I love finding a quiet space and losing myself in a novel. I’ve missed this little escape in my day. Now my girls are big enough to choose their own books from the library, it gives me the chance to browse through the selections and pick some of my own reading material. Not the “How To Grow Your Home Based Business in 5 Easy Steps” manuals, which are all well and good, but that’s still business. I’m referring to the wonderful world of fiction!

As entrepreneurs we need to find more balance. We often spend way more than our fair share of hours in a day thinking and doing business. We must switch gears and stimulate other interests.

Here are 5 reasons why you should make time for the joy of reading:

1. It allows you to single-task. Have you ever read and re-read a paragraph or a page in a book over more than once because your mind is elsewhere? Multi-tasking is not an option when it comes to reading and comprehending what you’ve read. You cannot cook dinner, allow your mind to wander to your to-do list, or have a conversation. You have to bring yourself back to the task at hand.

2. Learn something new – even when reading fiction. All good writers invest time to research their story. They include details, essential facts and statistics that give their stories meaning and create a reality we can recognize and be drawn to. They also use personal observations and quotations giving a story authenticity. You will gain some genuine new information that may indirectly affect your business.

3. Escapism. As entrepreneurs, we spend so much of our day dedicated to work. Reading fiction can be magical. We go places in our minds that we may never experience in reality. Or we may uncover our next travel destination!

4. Practice being present. This is related to single-tasking but takes it a bit further. You need to clear your mind of the 101 other things going thru it in order to be aware of what you’re reading. If you find your mind wandering to something you need to do, bring yourself back to the present and focus on what’s going on right now. Being present takes practice and is an incredibly useful skill in all aspects of work and life and increases your enjoyment of the here and now.

5. It’s a forced break. Because we are drawn away to another time and place, a good story gives our minds a break from what might be going on in our own reality. Time away is a good thing – we usually come back refreshed and often with a new perspective. We may be inspired by new ideas picked up through something we’ve read. Somehow answers seem to ‘find us’ if we’re open to it.

So, my question to you is this? Have you read anything good lately? I hope so and would love to hear about it!

As a Virtual Assistant (VA), Jennifer Hazlett provides offsite administrative help from her home based office to business owners with a multitude of office management and technical tasks, giving clients the expertise they need and more time to focus on growing their business. Sign up at Jennifer’s website, Alternate Admin http://www.altadmin.ca/ for your complimentary report “101 Ways to Boost Business with a Virtual Assistant”.

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At one level Willie The Actor by David Barry is a crime novel in which a ruthless criminal commits bank robberies. On another it achieves the feel of dramatised documentary, for its eponymous anti-hero, William Sutton, is not fictitious and lived a real life. David Barry introduces us to Willy in 1923 and we bid him farewell in 1976. And it’s a farewell that is fonder than the reader might have been expected at the outset.

Willie The Actor is not a “who dunnit” in any sense, because at no point in the book are we left in any doubt about who is perpetrating the robberies. We even have an insider’s description of his crimes, a rationale and a plan for their execution. It’s Willie, of course, who is behind them. They are his claim to fame, a fame that the novel fills out. Willie, or William, or Bill – however we meet him – did not commit one of the robberies, however, and that one proves to be a particularly important one for him and his future. In this case we find him falsely accused and wrongly convicted. He was innocent and yet he was positively and definitively identified by a string of eye-witnesses. A touch of irony here.

Willie The Actor is not even very good at being a criminal. Yes, he succeeds in the short-term and money passes through his hands. But then he always fails, in that he usually gets caught.

Bill Sutton’s first forays into armed robbery are facilitated by rented outfits by means of which an accomplice impersonates various forms of officialdom. To cover their rental of this gear, the pair establish a bogus theatre school, an operation that obviously needs to rent costumes on a regular basis. Hence Bill Sutton is labelled with his nickname, Willie The Actor, in media reports of his antics.

But still, he is a criminal. He mixes with some unsavoury sorts, hoodlums, gangsters, extortionists, racketeers. Many of these acquaintances, partners or employers think nothing of shooting to get their own way. They maim, kill and deform human obstacles that even threaten to bar their path.

But not Willie. He is different. He is an almost honourable thief who might threaten violence but never uses it. He even displays a gentility, a compassion which eventually allows him to go straight for a number of years, holding down a poorly paid job in a care home for the elderly.

David Barry’s portrayal of this enigmatic character is subtle in that his criminal is always on the brink of achieving a respectability for which, we sense, he yearns. He is capable of love, whereas his partners in crime often exploit and oppress their women. He could have become a devoted and loyal father, but circumstances apparently require him to take a different route. And, perhaps most enigmatically of all, he might even have aspired to academic achievement, as evidenced by his life-long love of literature.

But it is not to be. In the end Willie is both debt-free and penniless. He has harmed no-one directly, but also perpetrated serious criminal acts. He has realised none of his talents, but has achieved undeniable infamy. And eventually he aspires to the humdrum commonplace of the ordinary, a luxury his apparent need to rob has previously always denied him.

David Barry conveys this complexity with a true lightness of touch. We never really get to know William Sutton, however. This is not a criticism of the book, because we are left with the impression that neither did anyone else.

About the Author:

I grew up in Sharlston, then a mining village, and later Crofton, near Wakefield, UK. I went to London University and then did two years as a VSO in Kenya. For 16 years I taught in London before moving to Brunei technical education. I worked to Zayed University in the UAE for three years and, since 2003, I have lived in Spain, completing a PhD in education’s role in Philippine development and my first published novel, Mission.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Willie the Actor by David Barry

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