2018 incidents of infamy

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2018 incidents of infamy

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1Cecrow
Oct 16, 2018, 9:08 am

Started this year with 120 in the TBR pile and eight months later, still 120 in the TBR pile.

Too many good deals at the local charity store. Students dumping their English lit texts here, I think, and they are in pristine condition, fresh out of the university bookstore, barely cracked open, probably dropped the course - I snap those up. I need hypnosis to either forget where this store is or that it deals in books.

2MrsLee
Oct 16, 2018, 9:37 am

This is going to be a sad reading year as far as goals are concerned for me. Will be lucky to finish 50 books, as compared to the usual 100+ I read in a year. Of those, I purchased about 5 - 7 this year. The rest are from my shelves or the ereader. My notes say that I've rehomed 10 of the books I've read. There is still no space/room on my shelves.

3stellarexplorer
Oct 16, 2018, 11:29 am

I am at a total loss. I started a YouTube channel in June, making one video a week, 18 so far. They take around 12 hours a week. I was busy before this!
My reading has dwindled to a drip. Something has to go; I didn’t have an extra 12 hours a week lying around. Something has to change, but in the mean time, I’m mourning my reading :(

4PhaedraB
Oct 16, 2018, 7:22 pm

I haven't made a dent in my TBR bookcase either. Had a lot of medical problems that have played havoc with my concentration. I tried to read a magazine the other day and it was a struggle.

5stellarexplorer
Oct 17, 2018, 2:14 am

>4 PhaedraB: so sorry!

6MrsLee
Oct 17, 2018, 9:00 am

>3 stellarexplorer: I keep telling myself it is only a season, but it feels like a very long one. I hope you find a satisfactory balance.

>4 PhaedraB: Oh, that's rough. May you heal soon.

I hold out hope because my mom, who is 87, can't do much of anything but read now. It is a challenge to keep her Kindle full of fresh material.

Also, here is an article in the NYT for encouragement: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/books/review/personal-libraries.html

I love these paragraphs,
"A person’s library is often a symbolic representation of his or her mind. A man who has quit expanding his personal library may have reached the point where he thinks he knows all he needs to and that what he doesn’t know can’t hurt him. He has no desire to keep growing intellectually. The man with an ever-expanding library understands the importance of remaining curious, open to new ideas and voices.

Taleb argues that a personal library “should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates and the currently tight real-estate market allow you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books."

7Cecrow
Editado: Oct 17, 2018, 10:06 am

>6 MrsLee:, it's definitely nice to have a whole whack of unread books that I'm feeling confident, a personal library to sample from where everything looks interesting to me. I didn't even spend a whole lot of money to acquire most of them, so that's not really a factor.

I really like this quote from James Boswell, that excuses all the time I spend on LT: "Every man should keep minutes of whatever he reads. Every circumstance of his studies should be recorded; what books he has consulted; how much of them he has read; at what times; how often the same authors; and what opinions he formed of them, at different periods of his life. Such an account would much illustrate the history of his mind."

8ulmannc
Oct 17, 2018, 10:47 am

This is my favorite quote about a library and I like to think (selfishly) that Mark Twain is talking about my library! "In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them." That's why I make it a point to go into my library every day or so.

Besides, it eliminates cobwebs (sic).

The trouble is that I see something I HAVE to read and the pile next to my reading chair gets taller and taller! Cheaper than a book store but then that really has never stopped me. Off to Clarence's place next week!

9Cecrow
Oct 17, 2018, 11:41 am

In one of the Game of Thrones books, George Martin has a character say that people who don't read only live once, but if you read then you live multiple lives. That's what I primarily feel, spending time with my personal library: not much vibes other than anticipation from the unread, but lots of memories of lives lived from the ones I've completed.

10stellarexplorer
Oct 17, 2018, 11:56 am

One of my favorites:

"My books stand as guarantors of an extended life -- a life that is far more interesting and meaningful than the one I am forced to lead daily." -- roughly recalled from memory of Saul Bellow's Dangling Man

11MrsLee
Oct 18, 2018, 8:23 am