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August 13, 2008
Books : Seeing the Bottom of the Barrel
So, having read 70 books off of my to-be-read shelf over the last few months, certain patterns have started to emerge - certain books keep getting put back to be read “later”. A couple I have put off because they are huge and I haven’t wanted to start on them right now; but there are clearly others for which my original interest has waned. There are no books I can see (more on that in a moment) that I have no interest in; but there clearly are quite a few for which I have titles pending on my Amazon wish list that are far more interesting to me. I have to be honest with myself, were I not being disciplined in my book purchases and therefore had a constant stream of new books coming into the house, I would probably never get around to reading them.
Which leaves me at a quandary – should I discipline myself to read them (given that I have already paid for them), or should I acknowledge that there are things I’d rather be reading and simply punt them now. Fortunately, I have a bit of time to make that decision – there are still a number of books that I am very much interesting in reading; but the bottom of the barrel is quickly becoming visible.
While I am writing about books, two other points of note.
First, I have now read enough books off my shelves that they are no longer cluttered and I have been able to arrange things so that all of them are visible. This is significant progress since all three of the shelves were two-deep when I started.
Second, on September 9, “Anathem” the latest book by Neal Stephenson (my favorite fiction author) comes out. While it is 950 pages, I plan to buy it and read it immediately.
Posted by Steven at August 13, 2008 05:00 AM
Comments
Life's too short to spend doing things when there are more interesting things to be done. I would punt those books and donate them somewhere so that someone eventually reads them (and to get the tax writeoff for donating new books).
Posted by: janbergs ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://sighsandmusings.stevenanne.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at August 13, 2008 10:16 AM
Yeah, I'm leaning that way too. Part of me says "But what if there's a slow period in interesting book publishing and these end up the most interesting books for me to read?" But the more rational rest of me says: not likely and if it happens I have plenty of good books to re-read.
So, I may take a weekend and sort though the remaining books on my shelf and remove those I doubt I'll get around to. Perhaps I'll put them in a separate box in the store room and punt them in a year if I don't find a reason to read them.
Posted by: Steven at August 13, 2008 12:43 PM
Oh, gosh. The two of you are always looking for space and organization. Don't put them in a box and in a closet where they'll just be in the way and have to be sorted again in a year's time. Just make up your mind to do it and then DO IT!
Posted by: janbergs at August 14, 2008 04:10 PM
Actually Anne and I both use this technique as part of our pursuit of "space and organization". Things we think we can do without but aren't sure we box up and put in the store room for some period of time, and if we don't have a need to open the box in that time, we just punt. There's never any "sorting again", just the temporary cost of the extra box. Anne got rid of a lot of her clothes after doing this.
Posted by: Steven at August 14, 2008 06:46 PM
BTW – for clothing I have a simpler solution.
At the start of the year I hang up a marker on the left side of my closet. Whenever I put clothes back after wearing and washing them, I also put then on the left side of the closet (to the left of the marker). So at the end of the year, I know that any clothes still to the right of the marker haven't been warn and should probably be punted (usually a few I keep anyway for rare special occasions; but most I punt).
Yeah – I'm like that.
Posted by: Steven at August 14, 2008 07:04 PM
