Too Many Books

It has come to my attention that I have piles of books appearing around my apartment.  Books that I have bought, books that I have checked out from the library, books lent me by friends.  The one thing they all have in common is that they are all books I have been intending to read for some time now.

So, in the tradition of many an avid reader before me, I am hereby setting about to make a list of my current piles, in the hopes that it will somehow encourage me to read through them.  At the very least, I hope, it will encourage me to see the breadth of topics I am interested in.

So, vaguely in order by the intended reading schedule:

• Why Evolution is True (currently reading)
• Hundred Years of Solitude (reading off and on)
• War is a Force that Gives us Meaning (half way through, on pause)
• unChristian (read a few pages, on the list)
• The Shack (so as to be able to converse about it)
• Pilgrims of Christ on the Muslim Road (half way, on pause)
• Financial Statecraft (purchased years ago, will read eventually)

Mind you, these are just the ones currently around my apartment, of course, sitting in stacks with various other literature–several devotionals, Bibles, a book on climbing, journals, magazines, etc.  There is a considerably longer list in my head (most of which I have forgotten at any given moment in time) that needs to be dealt with eventually.

Lest you think that I never get around to actually reading, I  finished Chesterton’s Orthodoxy this morning.  And last summer I had what was possibly my biggest reading spree ever, reading over the course of six months The Brothers Karamazov, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Moby Dick, Mansfield Park, and The Count of Monte Cristo, among other things.

In fact, I think I read so much that I needed to take a break from books (something I didn’t know was even possible to do), and spent a while quietly meandering through the pages of my weekly New Yorker.  Now, however, I am clearly back on track.  And with that, I’m off to learn a little more about Why Evolution is True before bed.