The Impossible Dream

April 7, 2009 at 6:46 am | Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Do you suppose it’s possible to have, at some point, read every single book in one’s house?  To have not a single volume left unperused on any shelf?  (Excluding the phone book, or…?)

I’m merging households this summer, for the first time in nine years.  It seems like as good a time as any to try to clear some space in the bookshelves.  Honestly, half of what I have right now is either a library book, on loan from a friend, or was passed on to me by someone with the intention that I pass it on again.  (I almost never keep a book once I’ve read it).  I don’t feel like I can just… offload… these books, because I do intend to read them.

I can stop any time, I swear!

Anyway, what this means is that I’ll be reading a strange mishmash of things for the next few weeks.  Hand-me-down books are a lot like second-hand clothes – while they may suit the new owner, they reflect the taste of their original purchaser, and so standing next to one another they may appear to be odd mates.  For instance, I just finished a Jodi Picoult that was tucked in there with a couple of Booker Prize winners.

That’s the other problem – I just got over being quite sick and lacked the brainpower to read anything more complicated than fashion magazines.  I looked at my stack of library books and found they were all heavy non-fiction topics, with the exception of one 600-page novel.  Sigh.  So anyway, I figured I would start with the grocery-store paperbacks and work my way up from there as I start getting more oxygen to my brain.  (No offense, Ms. Picoult, I’m just jealous of your alarmingly good looks).

Anyway, to make a long story short, I’m going to try to read my way through half a bookcase by the end of the summer.  Is true love motivation enough for such a seemingly lost cause?