Worming my way through my reading list

 

A commentary on all that I read - fiction and non-fiction I went completely digital with my reading over a decade ago. And since then, I have been collecting books with the avarice of a miser accumulating money. Sometimes, I miss physical books. I still have a good collection of them but I also have digital formats of them and so never really read the physical books. One advantage of having physical books is that when I look at my collection, I feel a bit daunted about all the ones that I have not read and that, at least, may stop me from buying more. With digital books, there is no such pressure unless I look at my list obsessively. And before I knew it, I am somewhere in the north of 2,000 books in my digital library and wondering when I am going to find the time to read all these books. Every once in while, I read a review for a great book and go to Amazon to buy it only to have Amazon show me this shocking message: “You purchased this book on Mar 2, 2016. Read now?”! How did I end up here? I remember my impecunious childhood where I had to ration books to make them last or re-read them until I could lay my hands on my next book (this was before I could afford membership in lending libraries). This is exactly what happened to me with my music collection! Remember owning only a half dozen cassette tapes and wearing them down listening to them incessantly? Now, when I bring up my current favorite music player on my phone and accidentally stumble on the All Songs list, I get this very helpful message: Playing time 62.5 days What it is telling me is that, if I start at the beginning of my collection today and play it continuously, I will get to the last song in my collection after a couple of months! This is forcing me to come up with this theory: The amount of time that you have to read or listen to music is inversely proportionate to the size of your collection. I will call it The Thodlas’ Theorem! Is it ok to leave books unread before moving on to others? I am sure many do it. I look at my reading list like it is a well-stocked buffet. Every time I pick up something to read, the others look more appetizing. And it doesn’t help to be in a family full of bookworms who are constantly suggesting new books to me. In fact, there are so many of us bookworms in the family that it is beginning to look more like an infestation. I should at least draw some genre-boundaries. The trouble with me is that I can’t! I am jumping from genre to genre and book to book like those howlers in the Amazon jungle. I got this impulse under control for a while. Imposed a strict edict on myself that I would finish reading a book before even looking at others. That resolution lasted for a few months. And going along that path, I started reading Exhalation by Ted Chiang. Halfway through that book, I read a review of Helene Wecker's The Golem and the Jinni and the reviewer was so persuasive that I should drop everything and read this book that that is exactly what I did. No regrets about it though. The Golem and the Jinni was outstanding (I completed it by the way)! The same thing happened with Bill Napier's Nemesis which was recommended to me by one of my brothers and which looked like another one that I would read through but alas! came along The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman ending up as the nemesis of Nemesis! I love Philip Pullman’s books. His Dark Materials Trilogy is in my all time favorite Top 10 books list (more on this in another post). I blame this book flirtation on two things: The Google feed on my phone keeps showing me all kinds of lists: 10 Books You Must Absolutely Read Before You Die 25 all time great science fiction books and so on… The other is a kind of virtual book club virus that is constantly doing the rounds in the family chat groups. Everyone is always reading something and they are only too happy to tell me that I should read whatever they are reading too. Genre-boundaries! I think that is the ticket. And if I can pick a genre that no one else is interested in…sigh