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Using ourself as both experimental and control group, we conducted an 8-week experiment in which we watched entire seasons of television shows (downloads and dvds). These are our findings. Unfortunately they apply to us only, but you may want to observe the effects in your own cases.

1. Being obsessive, we cannot stop at one episode but must go on until the whole set is finished. This is all right when we have nothing to do, but bad when we have chores.

2. In our case TV, even TV of a high quality, has a sort of tranquilizing effect. It doesn’t exactly make us sleepy, but we get too relaxed, even lazy. We fall into a trance. After a few episodes, picking up a book and reading seems to require too much effort.

We suspect that TV heightens passivity. It’s useful for decompressing (then falling asleep) after a long day at work, but not when you intend to do work.

3. In fact TV seems to take away our desire to read by offering us a less demanding alternative. “Here, why don’t you get comfortable and we’ll do all the work. You don’t have to use those neural pathways, give them a rest. Have some more chips.”

Again, this is us on TV. The effects on other people may be completely different.

* * * * *

In our current experiment we want to see how quickly we can finish these novels without missing our deadlines or becoming hermits.

Waiting for Sunrise by William Boyd (Available at National Bookstore, Php 995).
Why we picked it up: Psychotherapy, sex, intrigue, Vienna in 1913, and spies. We love literary spy novels, and William Boyd is a riveting storyteller. (Though we didn’t love The Blue Afternoon, his novel set in Manila in the 1900s, because we weren’t convinced he’d been to Manila.)

History of A Pleasure Seeker by Richard Mason (National Bookstore, Php315).
Why we picked it up: Sex, charm, comedy, more sex, Amsterdam in 1907. According to Jomari, whom we’ve taken to avoiding because every time we run into him he’s read four more novels (These are his recommendations), it’s like the cult film Something for Everyone with Michael York and Angela Lansbury, in which the protagonist does the butler, the employer’s son, the employer’s daughter, and the employer’s wife. Aha!

Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple (National Bookstore, Php545).
Why: Enthusiastic blurb by Jonathan Franzen, triggering our guilt at not having read his much-praised novel Freedom. Also Franzen was a friend of David Foster Wallace, whom we always remember during the grand slams. (17, DFW.) The writer worked on Arrested Development, which is a glowing endorsement. Jomari says it’s like an earlier Woody Allen (as in Hannah and Her Sisters) dysfunctional family comedy.

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter (National Bookstore, Php725).
Why: It’s set in Italy, involves the filming of the disastrous Cleopatra starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and has a very cinematic opening.

The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker (National Bookstore, Php725).
Why: Ordinarily the title would make us go away but it has an intriguing science-fiction premise: the rotation of the earth has started to slow down, the days grow longer and longer, gravity is affected, the environment is wrecked, but people still have to deal with everyday life, chores, relationships.

We’ll check back in four weeks.