For a variety of reasons I am rather discombobulated today. So original content is unlikely. Instead let me leave you with an interesting quote from Ready Steady Blog. Building on a question raised at Conversational Reading, Mark Thwaite describes his feelings when trying to decide what next to read:
My own feelings, stood in a room in which books have driven out almost everything else, where almost the entire contents of the room are the TBR pile, is somewhere between panic, excitement, dread and guilt. Having so many books around, the physical manifestation of my childhood dreams, the embodiment of a desire to appear well-read, cultured and intelligent, is a curious thing. Some of the books are read, of course, but many are unread and will remain unread. I know I’ll die before I get around to reading even a small percentage of them. They express, then, an impossibility, a present and continuing failure, they mock and jeer. Whilst seeming to offer the possibility of knowledge, and its attendant growth and change, they simultaneously underscore its futility, my absurdity. At the same time they suggest the world is knowable, codifiable, safe, they reinforce the impossibility to know it. Faced with my TBR pile I feel … small.
I would bet that a great many of my fellow book addicts can relate to that quote.
