1050 books and nothing to read ...

[ellarien]

Okay, it's not quite that bad.

The thing is, from 1996 to 2001, I was buying books faster than I was reading them, resulting in what must, at its height, have been a backlog of well over 200. (By the time I had everything entered in the database, it was down to 170, but the trend had been down for a while before that.) I decided this couldn't go on, and started cutting back on my purchases, with goals of 6 books a month in 2002 and 2003 and 3 in 2004. It worked out at more like 7, 7 and 4, but with a fairly steady consumption of 10 books a month, the backlog is now down to 55.

Next year, I hope to implement a different system: buy three or four books a month, read them while they're fresh (now there's a concept), read another three or four from the backlog, and re-read some of my favourites.

Right now, I'm trying to figure out what 10 books to line up for December, and rather disconcerted by the lack of choice. Of the 55, 25 were bought in the last two years; the other 30 are older than that -- in some cases, a lot older -- and thus both higher priority, if I want to beat this backlog once and for all, and less inviting, because they're old and stale and have been sitting on the shelves for years without ever quite catching my fancy.


Here's the list, copied and pasted from the database query that stands in for my 'to-read' pile
(dates are dates of acquisition, not publication.)

Booker & Haltom, T.& G. The Lamentations of Jeremiah 1983
Sulley, Henry The Temple of Ezekiel's Prophecy 1984
Davies, Norman Europe: A History 1997
Smith, Wilbur Birds of Prey 1997
Gribbin, John Blinded by the Light 1997
Rawn, Melanie The Mageborn Traitor (Exiles Volume 2) 1998
Owen, Stanley Into all the world 1998
Rohl, David Legend: The Genesis of Civilisation 1998
Krauss, Lawrence M. The Physics of Star Trek 1998
Olmstead, Robert Elements of the Writing Craft 1998
Davis, Kenneth C. Don’t know much about History 1999
Kehrwald Cook, Claire Line by Line: How to improve your writing 1999
Loewen, James W. Lies my Teacher Told Me 1999
Waterfield, Robin Herodotus: The Histories 1999
Stewart, Mary The Moonspinners (and other novels) 2000
Stewart, Mary The Wicked Day 2000
Seidman, Michael The Complete Guide to Editing Your Fiction 2000
Davies, Norman The Isles: A History 2000
Shaw, Ian The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt 2001
Pargetter, Edith The Heaven Tree Trilogy 2001
Ackroyd, Peter London the Biography 2001
Vinge, Vernor True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier 2002
Morgan, Ted Wilderness at Dawn 2002
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lost Road and Other Writings 2002
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lays of Beleriand 2002
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Shaping of Middle-Earth 2002
Hyslop, Stephen G. Bound for Santa Fe 2002
Erikson, Steven Memories of Ice 2002
Carpenter, Humphrey The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien 2002



Some of these are 1000+ page tomes, which has tended to hold them back in the 10 books/month regime;
the Melanie Rawn is awaiting (with fading hope) its long-promised sequel. The writing-related books are on the cusp of being reclassified as reference; the Wilbur Smith is only around because the used bookstore wouldn't take it off my hands. Albion, Latro in the Mist and Lays of Beleriand are actually still in the November queue, which discourages me from taking on anything overlong for December.

So:

Booker & Haltom, T.& G. The Lamentations of Jeremiah 1983
Loewen, James W. Lies my Teacher Told Me 1999
Krauss, Lawrence M. The Physics of Star Trek
Gribbin, John Blinded by the Light 1997
Olmstead, Robert Elements of the Writing Craft 1998
Stewart, Mary The Wicked Day 2000
Pargetter, Edith The Heaven Tree Trilogy 2001
Vinge, Vernor True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier 2002
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Shaping of Middle-Earth 2002
Morgan, Ted Wilderness at Dawn 2002

which is much heavier on non-fiction than usual, but should be manageable.

Comments

[dendrophilous.livejournal.com]

For a long time my habit has been to buy books and read ones from the library instead, since they have to be returned. Then add in that I stopped reading almost entirely in 2002, and my backlog is probably around half the books I own (so maybe 200/500).

I need to work on my to-read shelf, which holds the ones I plan to read sometime soon.