A Method to My Madness

I am starting off the new year with 23 books on my waiting-to-read shelf.  Yes.  My previous record was 18 (see my post about it here), but I had a really good reason this time, not just a general lack of self-control.  You see, I had four books left over on my shelf from back in early December while I was trying to kill some time waiting for my son and had nothing to do but peruse the library shelves.  Now, once I get down to only four books, it's definitely time to head back out and get some more, just in case some of those are no good and have to be abandoned.  And God forbid I am left with nothing to read.  So I never, ever, let my bookshelf run dry (so to speak).

So, I actually have been having this itch to buy some more books, even though my bookshelf space is officially full.  (I have finally filled up the double bookcase that I bought about three years ago, after having more than run out of space on my office bookshelves.)  So I went to my favorite online bookstore, BookOutlet.com, to see what kind of deals they had.  I spent pretty much a whole day browsing through something like four thousand book titles, making a list of books that sounded interesting and also of those that were selling for like three dollars or less.  The problem was, I don't like to buy books if I don't already know they are good enough to reread or share with someone else.  And there were a bunch of books that looked interesting and were really cheap, but only had a few copies left.  So what was I to do?

Well, since it was time for me to make another library run anyway, I went out and grabbed copies of the ones on my list that were at the branch closest to my house.  Which explains why I checked out 19 books this morning, when I already had four here.  See?  A very specific method and not just madness.

I think it took me something like three  months to finish the hoard I had accumulated at this time last year, but this time I checked out several books from the juvenile fiction section, which tend to be a faster read.  So I'm pretty optimistic that I can get through them all by the time February is over.  Here's what I've got, just in case you want to read any already for yourself and compare notes once I've gotten through them: