BUYING MORE BOOKS THAN YOU CAN READ IN A LIFETIME: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Well, the obvious answer to that puzzler is to live for all time. I’ll see what I can do about that one. If you reach the end of time and I am not there, you can sue me. That is, supernaturally, if you have the time to sue, at the end of all time.
   With the number of books on my shelves, it is time to contemplate mortality. How many unread books are on my shelves? And how much time is left, in which to read them?
   The rules are many and harsh. Cut and bruised, here’s one to live by. A book comes into the house and I read it. Sounds bone simple. That bitter rule is one I had to add to all the other fucking rules…
   Do not place bookshelves downstairs or on the stairs. Only hardback cookery books are acceptable in the kitchen. Never place paperback crime novels there, where they will wilt.
   If you find yourself with a copy of Hemingway, give that book to someone who likes Hemingway. In this way, you perform two good deeds in the same breath.
   Duplicate books are acceptable if one book is a gift from a friend.
   Books without covers or functioning spines should be stored where no more harm can come to them. Preferably with a dose of smelling-salts nearby.
   Set books down on surfaces lower than yourself. If you set a library copy of Graham Greene above you on a chest of drawers by the bedside come the end of an evening’s reading, you are at risk of squashing a spider which has no way out of that situation.
   The struggle is real. And by that, I mean the struggle to remove spider guts from Our Man in Havana before innocently returning it to the town library. My hardback copy is, as of this moment, spider-free.
   Try to return/retrieve borrowed books, even though accidents of space and time may prevent this. There is a law of physics which dictates that you should have at least one key in your possession that fits no known lock. I fear this may also apply to books on your shelves that you don’t recall purchasing or being given.
   You should have no need to write a witty, humorous, though biting and acerbic letter asking after the location of borrowed books. At worst, do this once in your lifetime. If the books are returned, call that a win. And never lend to that individual again.
   With space in short supply, put books where they fit in. The alphabet has no place in my library.
   There are other rules, many and varied, that I’ll remember in time not available to me as I type this short blog. But back to the harsh rule. When a book comes into the house, read it. Then the laws of physics kick in, and all that good intent goes to hell in a handbasket.
   Buying books in bulk as the result of sales…this is a good thing and saves you money. But then there is the pesky matter of reading the damned things. For reasons known to the Literary Gods alone, a sudden wall of books deeply resists reading. When books come, they come not single spies. I’m staring at the Big Battalions, now. And apathy is on the side of the Big Battalions.
   If I chip away here, there, reading a lone volume or two, I’ll complete whole runs of shelving. As usual, your reading fancy doesn’t take you in the direction of plugging a gap. You read what you want to read.
   Here, then, are the books we must read. Or try to read, before the end. We are all some way short of the books we must read if we play with the traffic. Yes, one careless driver could take a swipe in my direction and block my reading plans permanently.
   We don’t know how much time we have. To spend that time reading books, for a writer, is a necessity and not a luxury. I certainly know how much space I have, and must base my reading plans on that alone.
   Let’s get into the statistics. Top shelf, directly in front of me. The top of a bookcase is a shelf all to itself. Wide books, boxed sets, act as their own bookends. This is not always possible or desirable as an arrangement. And so, I use slim metal bookends here, there, to provide the illusion of support.
   Statistics. I count 21 books on that top shelf. Six to go.
   Next shelf down. There are 25 tomes there. Some I’ve read before, but these are my copies now and not library books, so I want to read them again. Completely unread books, though. Why, there’s but one. Nat Hawthorne’s story of THE HOUSE OF SEVEN GABLES.
   As soon as I decide to read that, I’ll have suddenly read an entire shelf and, with one mighty bound, I shall leap free. It’s deciding to read Hawthorne that’s the clincher.
   Next shelf…
   The reference shelf. Books I built up, over the centuries. I still use them, even if it is quicker to type into a search engine than to stand and lean forward to consult a volume. In that way, I avoid researching the same five sentences everyone else has read on Wikipedia. As for reading books…
   Research books are designed to be dipped into, and need never be finished or read all the way through. However…
   I’ve read exactly one dictionary from start to fart, and that’s The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce. True, I wish I could unread the thing, but that’s beyond my powers. If I could feel glad at any author’s disappearance, why, it would be that of Ambrose Bierce. Vanishing tends to limit the literary output.
   There is the spectre hovering over us that old Ambrose may one day return from out of the mists of time. Should he do so, he should do so while strictly retired from writing. Sadly, he’d be 180 years old and – as writers never retire – I’m sure he’d have a few things to type up on the topic of longevity.
   Given an intervening television, I must stand to count the 23 volumes on the lowest shelf containing books. There are electronic computer-related gadgets in the depths, and no books survive down there on the ocean floor. Here’s the tricky thing…
   Staring at this unread shelf, I know I’ve read a few books there. One or two, I am not so sure of. And I have a decent memory. I wonder, if I take a book off that shelf, will I find a slip of paper within? Showing my progress. Not a bookmark…
   Yes, a bookmark.
   But not a rectangular piece of cardboard.
   How do you mark progress in a book? You absolutely do not bend the corner of a page. (Given time, I am recalling more book rules.) And no, you don’t use a highlighter. Them’s fightin’ words. I have books in my collection that were dog-eared by other hands. And yes, there’s highlighting in there, too.
   You buy a book for 10p at the used book place, well, you gets what you pays for. Coffee circles and nicotine thrown in free of charge.
   I’ve always found bookmarks tricky. And usually…they are not required. Books that come with ribbons as bookmarks – yes, I have plenty of those. And I never use any. Generally, I read as much of a book as possible while holding back chaos.
   If I can read a book in a day, I will. Chaos be damned and no bookmark required. Rarely, I’ve used a scrap of paper as an unobtrusive bookmark. Sitting a book on a table, face-down, wide-open, isn’t something I do. It’s easy enough to remember the page, arrange coffee, and return to where I left off.
   Chapters are there as handy reminders to stop and arrange coffee. Writers are, themselves, great users of coffee, after all, and have provided the chapter as a basic hint to fuck off and consume caffeine from time to time. On occasion, I’ll tackle a book on a daily basis and slip a piece of paper in there if I know I am likely to be disrupted for a few days.
   Daily basis? What sort of book?
   A book of lists.
   Historical events, by day. It took me fifty days to read FIFTY DAYS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD using this list method. I was reading other books, more rapidly, during that time. Finish the day with an entry from a book like that and you have a reading routine. With coffee after midnight. That is built into the reading routine, by law.
   No, I don’t read one book at a time. This is more a law of reality than a rule.
   There’s a book on the unread shelf, full of daily notes. I reached out to check it, and, sure enough, out of sight and out of mind – behind the television that passes for my computer monitor – there was a slip of paper denoting progress.
   I unfolded the slip and found it was a scrap from a corner of a page from a letter to a dyslexic Irishman about the gift of a book. Why would I have that here, when, surely, the letter went out to Ireland there?
   There are people who write and then read on the screen, and they are happy people. I am not here to disrupt their happiness. That’s their business. I find it easier to print what I have written and to read my work aloud from the printed page…despite being a digital author.
   The dyslexic Irishman describes me as an analogue writer in a digital world. He, too, reaches for physical books when possible. In embracing digital books wholeheartedly, I could do away with the eleven bookcases in this room. If there are eleven.
   I must count them again.
  And the eighteen bookcases across the hall, come to that. If there are eighteen there. I must wend my way around the stacks, yonder. The process of counting is deceptive. Which is as it should be, in any library packed to the rafters with shelves.
   Long story short, too late, I printed the letter off and read it over for typos my electronic checkers never quite catch. The Mark I Human Eyeball takes over, and spots the glitches. I reprinted the page and scrapped the mistake-filled one.
   And I used the useless page, making it useful. A soft paper corner of it served as a makeshift bookmark. This distorted the weft and weave of the book far less than a sharp cardboard bookmark would do.
   There’s enough text from that letter to identify the book I sent. A collected edition of a comic book – easier for a dyslexic person to tackle, with less text on the page. In a novel, a wordy story might reach 400 words before you turn to the next page. A wordy comic book will feel like that if it runs over a hundred words to the pictures on a single page.
   And, of course, the dyslexic Irishman had the same struggle in reading as usual. So he encountered that story on television. Neil Gaiman’s Sandman character finally came to life on the small screen – after a few truly dreadful attempts to turn the saga into an Endless action movie franchise.
   The Lord of Dreams is back. He’s your worst nightmare. This time it’s personal. Only in two dimensions. May contain traces of nuts.
   That story is known for the character of Death, who turns up to take people to their ultimate destinations. She spares a man named Hob Gadling in the presence of her brother, Dream. Buying more books than you can read in a lifetime? Well, the obvious answer to that puzzler is to live for all time. I’ll see what I can do about that one.