I took a quick look at an old post (Good Book Hunting: August 27, 2007, and I zoomed in on the picture of my to-read shelves in Old Trees, and I thought, Man, I need to get to reading some of those books.
I see a bunch of them on the shelves then that I have not yet read. Mostly because they’re big and colorful and draw my attention to them even today. Also, because they’re still unread. In my defense, such as it is, I have more than doubled the size of the to-read stacks since then, and most of the books I’ve read in the interim have been acquired since then.
Also, in my defense, amongst the books I bought that day, I have read:
- The Black Hole by Alan Dean Foster.
- Panic in Philly by Don Pendleton.
- Ranting Again by Dennis Miller.
- The Hunt For Red October by Tom Clancy.
- Kilroy Was Here by Charles Osgood.
- The Handyman by Penelope Mortimer.
- Three Novels by Damon Knight.
- Black Star Rising by Frederik Pohl.
- Jem by Frederik Pohl.
- Lori by Lori Bloch.
That’s 10 of the 23 I bought that day, so I’ve got that going for me.
Amongst the things I can identify on the shelves, I know I’ve probably read most of the McBain books present; the Ogden Nash volumes of poetry; Seawitch by Alistair MacLean; The Lord of the Rings trilogy; Hannibal: The Novel; a couple of the Gor novels; and probably more.
So I’m making progress, just probably not as much as I am making the potential for progress.
How many to-read shelves do I have today? Seven full bookshelves and a small bookshelf.
