This is something I used to do back in the AOL JournalLand days, when I had a good coterie of readers and, dare I say, virtual friends. I think I did this on The Bibliophiles, my book journal. It's a fun activity to do once in a while, see what interesting things we have in our various piles, how they change over time (or not). I just finished A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book, and have some thoughts on it in my other blog, here. It's kind of a relief to turn to Ruth Rendell's Inspector Wexford as a less taxing read, the first book in my first pile. As it's winter and about my only outdoor activities are walking and hiking, my main offtime activity is reading - so there's quite a few piles around the house:
On the nightstand:
The Monster In The Box, Ruth Rendell
Alimentum; The Literature of Food, Issue 9
Owls and Other Fantasies, Mary Oliver
What We Eat When We Eat Alone, Deborah Madison/Patrick McFarlin
Wherever You Go, There You Are, Jon Kabat-Zinn
Deep Economy, Bill McKibben
By the couch:
Xeriscape Plant Guide, Denver Water
New Mexico Gardener's Guide, Judith Phillips
Native Texas Plants, Sally Wasowski
New Mexico Bird Finding Guide, NM Ornithological Society
Desert Wetlands, Niemeyer & Fleischner
Poems FromThe Cranes Two, Judith Roderick
The Quilts of Gee's Bend
And, worst - or best - of all, the pile of new books I've bought, or from the library, waiting to be read. I call this my "Reason to Keep Living" pile:
Too Much Happiness, Alice Munro
In The Kitchen, Monica Ali
Hardball, Sarah Paretsky
A Gate at the Stairs, Lorrie Moore
The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver
The Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood I started reading this one, before she came for an appearance at UNM, then set it aside when a flood of library books from my hold list showed up all at once. I will return to it when I get a library dry spell.
4 comments:
If I was tryig to read all these piles of books I wouldn't have time for anything else. I laughed when I read this because right now...I am sorting through piles and piles of accumulated clutter...things I've printed to save, photos, bits of paper with addresses, sketches, god knows what else. We all have our piles of SOMETHING!
Hey Kat, I have all those other piles too, all over the place. And as to my book piles, some of them are for research (the garden books, especially)) and browsing, not really for reading through. I'll read them all eventually - but I bet if I do this again in a few months or so, some of the same books will be in at least some of the piles.
For me, it's piles of paper that are consuming my table tops and mind. I'm filing away last year, and trying to get this year off to a more manageable start. As for books, I've got The Writer's Market and The Poet's Market on the home office desk, the next two books I'm reading by my favorite chair, and Her Voice, Her Faith by my bed.
And what ARE the next two books you're reading? Enquiring minds want to know.
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