Book Piles

I'm not a hoarder but I do have a real weakness for acquiring books. I favor hardcovers, which would explain why I has thus far resisted the lure of a Kindle. I like turning pages!

But the NY Times Book Review on Sundays, Amazon.com, Facebook, Twitter, what the guy next to me in Starbucks is reading...these are all catalysts and temptations to buy some more. And my piles of unread stuff are growing at an alarming rate! I noticed it today when I had to clear all the surfaces of my desk and nightstands so that I could pay some bills. I've only another month here in Florida before the horses and I pack up and return home to NY for the summer. These piles are the reading I wanted to get done during my show season. Along with my fitness goals, I like getting through my reading expectations! But I have tons to go and have trouble resisting adding to the list! Consequently, all the tables in my house have a pile of books atop them.

Part of the problem? If I really like something, I will promptly re-read it. This definitely slows down the shelving of my new treasures. I won't put a book away until I've read it. And I read very fast. But I just read Deborah Harkness' "A Discovery of Witches" three times in a row. In between, a re-run of "Twilight" on cable prompted me to read that again. I like interior design books, so Charlotte Moss and Carolyne Roehm lie open to the last rooms I was salivating over on the family room coffee table.

Which means I will be perusing one or both over tea tomorrow morning at breakfast.

"The Art of Racing with The Rain" has been guilting me since my birthday in January. It was gift from a like minded dog loving friend. It sits on the night table begging like a Lab puppy to be opened. The newest Sookie Stackhouse is under it. Except that prompted me to go back to the first one and reread the series. I'm about a third of the way through "Living Dead in Dallas." I put that down when I bought the Harkness. Nora Ephron's latest book is under Sookie. You see where I'm going with this?

Today my latest order from Amazon arrived. Ongoing arguments with a conservative Tea Party friend {how did I get a Tea Party friend????} about revisionist history, the US Constitution, and the current right wing in America {please do not let me go there on this blog!!!} has re-awakened  my interest in the 18th century and the Enlightenment. This dovetailed with reading Deborah Harkness and her incorporation of alchemy and the history of Science in "ADOW." So joining Sookie, the dog book, "The Best of Charles de Lint," and  the last Nora Ephron book are "The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution " by the aforementioned Ms. Harkness, and Jessica Riskin's "Science in the Age of Sensibility: The Sentimental Empiricists of the French Enlightenment." Rounding out this pile on my right hand nightstand is "Something Most Deadly" by Ann Self. I bought that because it's a mystery novel about characters who ride Dressage.

And this afternoon, while I was supposed to be paying bills and filing paper piles, I was surrepticiously reading Jillian Michael's latest. And I never read self help stuff!

I'm hopeless! But I love my books. Today I was good and shelved my finished reads. I resisted the temptation to order three more books mentioned in the Sunday Times but I did tear the reviews out before pitching the paper.

We'll see how long I can hold out from ordering them...