I will not say that I have too many books. I would never say that, even if I had All The Books which is probably impossible. Even if I had Most Of The Books, which I’m sure I don’t. But I have a lot of books. And I have a great many that I haven’t managed to read yet.
I did a quick count just to get an estimate, I went around to most of my shelves and counted the books I hadn’t read yet. I stopped at 200, and that wasn’t all the shelves and I didn’t even look at the ever-growing pile of advance copies sitting in the office. I have been accumulating books at a much faster rate than I can read them. They even show up in the mail all unexpected-like. And of course I am almost always incapable of visiting a bookstore without buying a book or five.
I think I’m at the point where 40-50% of the books I own I haven’t read yet. I used to keep them all on one shelf and had aspirations of keeping the to-read books contained to that single shelf but that never really worked and now they’re everywhere. They make me feel slightly less guilty this way, camouflaged in with books I have read.
I need more time to read.
I’m not the fastest reader. I’m not the slowest, either, but it takes me a few days to read a decent-sized book, especially when I’m busy which is pretty much always lately. I’ve become slightly more fond of travelling just because it gives me more time to read.
(Though, as an aside, the travel reading tends to mean that the hardcovers stay unread longer because the paperbacks are more travel-friendly. Yes I am aware that an e-reader would help with this but I have tried and failed at e-reading and I like my paper books with their delicate fibers beneath my fingertips and also I am far too fond of flipping back and forth.)
Since it would have been architecturally dangerous to pile all the to-read books into a proper to-read pile I instead put together a sampling of things that I am really looking forward to but haven’t gotten to read yet because of that pesky time thing. Hopefully all of these will be read in 2013, I should have more reading time next year.
