So Many Books, So Little Time

I love books. At last count I own 266 books, most of which are, unfortunately, in storage right now. I also love to read, when I have the time and energy. Lately it seems, I either have no time to read or no energy to do so and fall asleep whenever I pick up one of the many books in my collection that are yet unread.

I'll give you an example. I'm currently reading Planeswalker by Lynn Abbey, which is the second book in the Artifacts Cycle of the multi-book, multi-author series of Magic: The Gathering novels. I began reading it on October 29, 2007. Yep, that's right, I'm only half way through a novel of merely 359 pages and it's taken me four-and-a-half months to get that far. Sounds ridiculous, eh? I agree.

At one time I was quite a voracious reader. Even a 400-600 page novel scarcely would last a week in my eager hands. Now, though, it seems my desire is there but I can't get motivated. The “spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,” as it were. I remember back in October figuring out that if I knuckled down and read at least one book a week and didn't add anymore books to my personal library, it would take me somewhere in the vicinity of six months to get caught up. Evidently I'm failing at that concept in two respects; I haven't been reading a book a week (obviously) and since October at least two new books were added to my collection. To make things worse, I belong to The Science-Fiction Book Club and have a contractual obligation to purchase at least four more books within the next few months, which means I'll be making my six month estimate stretch out even farther.

It's not that I'm lazy or that the books I have strike me as boring. It's truly a matter of mental discipline. For example, as I write this blog entry, I could be reading instead. When I spend two to four hours on the golf course, I could be at a coffee shop reading instead. Let's not also forget the countless hours wasted in front of the television even when there's not a single damn thing worth watching on at the time. Add all that up, and even with my slow reading speed of twenty to thirty pages per hour, and I could've finished at least one book by now if not three! In other words, the title of this blog is really a bit of a misnomer as it's not really that I don't have time, it's that I don't make time to spend reading. That's really a sad fact considering how much I complain that there's nothing on TV anymore except reality show bullshit and there haven't been much in the way of good movies lately either. One thing's for sure; I don't need to buy anymore books for a very long while and should probably consider taking some of the ones I do own to a used bookstore.

~ JC

Next week (Sunday, March 16): my commentary on Golf and why I play the game