Bad Faery

Monday, December 31, 2007

Books, books and more books!

“I can’t reach. You know, I had no idea books had such different personalities.” Helena (Mirrormask)

I don’t normally make New Year’s resolutions and my upcoming OU course is enough of a challenge to be getting on with, thank you very much, but there is something else that I really, really need to get to grips with. And that’s the ever growing pile of unread novels crowding my bookshelves.

There are a number of reasons (feel free to label them excuses) as to why I’ve amassed so many. Firstly and most importantly, reading has always been a stress release mechanism for me. When I’ve been worried or upset about something, escaping into a good book has been my main coping strategy. So I suppose in a way the fact that I don’t read as much as I used to could be seen as a positive indicator that I’m a happier person than I used be. Or so I hope.

However I still feel this need to have a ‘safety net’, that is, a stock pile of unread books ready and waiting just in case. I’m also a fairly fast reader and can churn through books quite quickly and in the past I’ve found it only adds to my agitation if I don’t have something there at my fingertips to provide that much needed avenue of escape. Which means I always like to have several unread books, and preferably covering a variety of genre and subject matter to suit whatever mood I happen to be in.

But now I have so many novels waiting to be read. I need to declare a moratorium on buying books*, new or second hand, until I’ve made some kind of headway.

What I have discovered this year is that I can’t read in dribs and drabs. Since moving house I no longer go home for lunch and have been taking a book with me but it simply doesn’t suit my reading style. I need to read to in long, uninterrupted bursts. A half hour there, a half hour here, and I find my attention drifting off, and it can make a single book start to feel like an interminable experience. You lose that quality of pure escape as you are conscious that you can’t get too involved or you’ll forget to pay heed to the time and end up being late for work.

So, no more reading of fiction at lunch, not unless it’s something I’ve read before and am not quite so desperate to find out what’s going to happen next.

And that brings me to another problem I have. I am an inveterate re-reader. I think this particular habit stems from my childhood. I didn’t grow up in a particularly bookish household and since I only had a limited store of books I invariably ended up re-reading and re-reading the ones I did have. I loved to inhabit the worlds created in those books, to allow the characters to resonate to the point where I would be having dreams about them. To this day if there is a book or movie or TV show I particularly enjoy I will reread/rewatch it, anything to saviour the experience. Which of course does make it that little bit difficult to find time to move on to the next new thing.

So my challenge for 2008 is to read these books!

Bad Faery’s Shamefully Large Pile of Unread Books (in no particular order of preference)

1. American Gods, Neil Gaiman
2. Assassin’s Apprentice, Robin Hobb
3-16. A Series of Unfortunate Events books 3 to 13
17. Beowulf, Seamus Heaney
18. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler (started, not finished, it’s three novels actually as it also includes Farewell, My Lovely and The Long Goodbye)
19. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
20. Brilliance of the Moon, Lian Hearn (part of a trilogy, not read yet as I want to reread the first two books again)
21. Cat’s Eye, Margaret Atwood
22. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (started but abandoned)
23. The Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham
24. Winter Rose, Patricia McKillip, started but never finished even though she is one of my favourite fantasy writers, so I definitely want to try it again.
25. The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde, started but abandoned, another one given to me by a friend
26. Fire and Hemlock, Diana Wynne Jones
27. A Game of Thrones, George RR Martin, recommended by a friend, have owned for years and still haven’t read! May be because I’ve outgrown sword and sorcery?
28. God Bless You Mr Rosewater, Kurt Vonnegut, bought second hand for 50c
29. The Gormenghast Trilogy, Mervyn Peake, started but not finished
30. Gut Symmetries, Jeanette Winterson
31. Gypsy Hearts, RM Eversz
32. The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova
33. The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai
34. Labyrinth, Kate Mosse
35. Lifeclass, Pat Barker (started, not as good as previous books of hers which is why I didn’t get very far but I want to give it another chance)
36. Life Expectancy, Dean Koontz, given to me by a friend
37. Paradise, Toni Morrison
38. The Road, Cormac McCarthy
39. The Robber Bride, Margaret Atwood
40. Soul Mountain, Gao Xingjian (another one given by a friend who warned me at the time that it was heavy going which accounts in part as to why I’ve never gotten around to reading it)
41. The War of the Worlds, HG Wells

*novels only, non-fiction and OU related books are exempt.

Comments:

Ok fair enough, that’s quite a lot!  Do you get more stressed by the fact that you haven’t read them, than you do by not having something to read?!  I’d feel like I had to ‘catch up’… a disease much apparent in my life already, I always feel like I need to catch up.  Arrggghhhhh!  Especially with blogging!

Posted by Elizabeth on 01/02 at 10:27 PM

I’m wouldn’t classified myself as stressed out by having such a backlog. I’m rather looking forward to working my way through it! 2007 was an especially busy year on several fronts which accounts as to why I’ve let the ‘unread’ pile get so big. There just hasn’t being enough time in the day.

I was a little tempted to stack them all into a big tower of books and photograph them as a way to illustrate the task ahead but I think I would probably end up scaring myself!

Posted by Bad Faery on 01/02 at 10:43 PM

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