How hard is it to read 52 books in a year?
It isn't. Start by reading three books a week and then find yourself skipping weeks when life intrudes on your page-turning. Hope that it averages out.
Did I make my quota? On the last day of the year, I finished the 52nd book. Mission accomplished.
The challenge now is to finish off whole shelves of books in a far more organised way. In finishing shelves, I can clear entire bookcases of unread tomes.
That's the goal. But the plan? Sadly, the plan is unchanged - I read what I damn well want to tackle next. And that might leave a pesky shelf or a troublesome bookcase unloved and wasting by the wayside.
If I concentrate on this alcove, and that's a shaky prospect, then I am staring at five bookcases arranged in a semi-circle. To clear the large bookcase to my left, I'd tackle around 25 volumes. Half a year's reading, pretty much.
I'm not certain of the number, there. I have three books in a loose series and I know I've read two of them. So, just to be sure, I'd need to read all three of them. That's 27 volumes.
Quirks intrude. To the right, I see twelve or thirteen books that I must look at. Once I look at them, I'll know if I've read maybe that one on the end and the one next to it...
My memory is something that comes rated highly by other people. But I don't feel that, when staring at SO MANY BOOKS. Have I read that one? I'm sure I have.
This led me to read a book on the renaissance twice over, at a distance of a good half-decade. Didn't matter. It was a good book. And if I read it again by accident, I'm sure it'll still be a good book.
Directly ahead, eleven books taunt me. Read those, all on one shelf, and the bookcase itself is swept clean. Well. Damn.
The problem is that a book is a book is a book until you count page after page after page. And for every shelf of ten books, there's a shelf of eight reasonable books and two massive logs.
I must hacksaw my way through the logs. It's an achievement to pick up a slim volume and polish the damn thing off in a day. That week's book is done, and makes room for the log - and the log must be chewed through at a hundred pages a day every day for five days straight. I am a small termite, making little progress, in one of those weeks.
And I haven't even considered the books in the other place. Across a darkened hallway, there lies a room with even more books inside its bulging walls.
The good news. Books bought last year didn't exceed books read. So I am winning this war. Either I catch up on my excess or an entire case lands on me and I am squished by the weight of my folly.
To summarise: never buy loads of books in a sale, read your way down through the deficit...and then immediately buy more books in another sale, putting you back where you started.
It's hard to recover from that.
I'm doing what I can, a page at a time. Is that good enough? Well, I finish the books. And I haven't truly hated one book yet.
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