Oops! I did it again...

Yes, this pile really does exist in my house.  Right now.

Right now, I'm picturing one of my alter egos, the one who is organized and tidy and does things the way they should be done.  She is standing in front of me, leaning ever so slightly forward, index finger waving back and forth in the air, saying, "Tsk, tsk, tsk."

Do you see this stack of books to the right?  Lots of good books there, cool titles, great reads.  Kid books and grown up books.  Fantasy, mystery, history, memoir, nonfiction, self-help.  All with one thing in common.

I've started them all, and haven't finished a single one of them...yet.  And I can't exactly tell you why.  The bookmarks on the top two books are less than sixty pages from the end.  I'm only a few pages or chapters into most of these.  I've gotten half-way through Outliers, but it's been awhile since I put it down, so I'll probably have to scan what I read before just to catch up.

I'm a notorious book-jumper.  I wrote about it briefly in my post "Confessions of a slow scanner".  If a book hasn't completely sucked me in (or if I don't have the time to slip into a book coma), I am prone to pick up another one that looks interesting.  I could probably add a lot more to this pile, since I tend to start reading books when I purchase them, despite what's already in-process at home.  I blame Amazon; they make it way too easy for that to happen.  I thought those deliveries would slow down once I became a bonafide librarian, but noooooo.  My living room, and several flat surfaces around the house, are starting to resemble those musty old bookstores, with piles of books stacked willy-nilly, gathering dust, waiting to be rescued and read.

Can't you just smell the intoxicating musty dustiness of old paper?
(This isn't really my living room...yet.)

Why am I posting this, you may ask?  Because this, too, is what reading can be.  Reading can be hard; it can be boring.  Sometimes, there IS other stuff that's more interesting to do than reading.  Really.  And it's okay to go ahead and do that stuff!  The great thing about books is that they will still be there waiting for you to get back to them.  (That's also why bookmarks are great, too!)  So I'm going to listen to my alter ego this week and finish a few of them...well, I have to finish The Book of Flying super fast, otherwise I'll have real-life librarian at the public library tsk-tsking at me.  It's due Wednesday.

And since I stole a line from Brittany to title this blog, here's a musical blast from the past.