The book I am reading (The Sympathizer, by Viet Than Nguyen) is exactly 385 pages long. "So what?", you might ask, and reasonably so.
The problem is that 385 is exactly 5 x 7 x 11. On the one hand, it's a neat number, which gives me lots of mental toe holds on which to manage my progress through the book. It breaks neatly into 77 5-page units, 55 7-page ones, and 35 11-page ones. But few of them translate easily into percentages, which makes progress through the book a little slippery from the mental perspective.
Again, the question "so what?" quickly arises in the brains of the reasonable. My brain, with its quantitative lockjaw, resists this tendency. I sometimes wonder if the problem is that I stopped studying math too soon when I had the baseline talent to go further. So my brain is stuck perseverating over a bunch of rudimentary tasks, trying to prove to itself it's still got what it takes.
In any case, right now I need to put that aside and get dressed for tennis with Z, where I can seek to attain the magic 6 before he does, lest one of us be forced to go for a 7.
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