Current reading

I’m still in the middle of tracking down and noting my progress in all the books, that I am currently reading. Plus I have a bookcase of “to read” - books that I have bought  or borrowed but haven’t even started yet. To even get a look in they generally have to make it to the pre-read pile by my bed, but a book can be reviewed or mention somewhere and immediately, in a Pavlovian way , my attention will be caught and it will make the leap into my started reading list. Yet another book in the “currently reading” pile.

And then there is of course Marie Kondo, much in the spotlight at the moment with her thirty book limit. Now I have to say that  I started rationalising, pruning, sorting and re-organising my books long before she came on the scene.  I started in 2010 for God’s sake (1). But her presence in the news sphere somehow makes my rationalising, pruning, sorting and re-organising part of the current zeit-geist. This makes it easier to justify and to do somehow and has had the effect of making me tidy up my desk and my office.

Of course as soon as I look at this bookcase I realise there are a few re-reads in there and, although I'm not entirely sure yet, a few in-the-middle-of-reading-but-seemed-to-have-stopped (this is fine with the anthologies - they are meant to be dipped into) and a  few never-will-reads that I need to pluck the courage to throw out


(1) Pictorial proof - a link to a Facebook page of Iris Murdoch novels that I decided to ditch  And apparently I had a MANIFESTO for getting rid of books?? I can’t find it now.