The library ebooks are too easy to pull into my Kindle library. I can just pile them in there and add new ebooks to the piles of physical books that already taunt me with their many unread pages. Putting holds on these ebooks makes the situation even more complicated. I can't predict when one of them will become available. They just pop into my library totally indifferent to my current reading priorities. Do I read the interesting book I just borrowed with no wait or should I focus on the book I had to wait weeks to finally download?
I've been facing this dilemma all too often over the last few weeks. The Kindle Fire hack, where I can keep reading the book after my loan period expires as long as I don't go back to the home screen, allowed me to finish reading The Lost Colony (book 3 of The Old Man's War series) over the weekend. The delay in reading that was caused by the time I spent reading a book about parenting that I bought after reading some columns by the author online. I finished that book on Monday. Those two books bring my books read up to 39 for the year.
With both of those books finished I faced the rare instance of having no books in progress. After reading a few pages of some book I was able to check out without waiting in line, I started reading that book I mentioned about sleep. I heard an interview with the author on the Joe Rogan podcast. It was fascinating. I looked at the book in the store but wasn't compelled enough to take the step of actually buying it. I only recently thought to see if I the library had the electronic version. The wait wasn't too long, but other books were also becoming available as I was wrapping up The Lost Colony. The unpredictable aspect of when I will get a book that I have on hold makes figuring out what to read that much harder. I had to choose between Why we Sleep and the second book of the Outline trilogy. I have more time with Outline book so I went ahead and started reading the book about sleep.
My reading has taken a back seat to other parts of my life over the last couple of weeks. I ran the Marine Corps Marathon on October 28 (I jotted down some thoughts about that experience and how to do it better but I can't decide if I want to post it here or on my other, mostly neglected, blog). I spent most of the next week focusing on recovering from the marathon. Bedtime took a priority over reading. The marathon was why I had to rely on the Kindle hack. I was focused on the marathon rather than reading in the week leading up to and after my very long run. This week's unusual event was the watch party for a local Congressional candidate. My daughter really wanted to see if her Girl Scout troop leader was going to win. I was very leery about the whole thing, but it was important to her so I decided to do what I could to make it happen. It was mostly successful, the candidate won but we left well before the race was called in her favor, but that late night has impacted me all week. I was falling asleep early last night so I had no chance to read (I'm not going to force myself to stay up to read a book that highlights the need for us to get adequate sleep, especially when I get up early the next day to run). Most of these big life events are behind me so I should be able to get back to more reading in the next couple of weeks.
I have yet to read a page, but I am going to take on Dickens again when I get time to return to a physical book. I have decided to go with Martin Chuzzlewit. It is shorter than Little Dorritt and feels slightly more intriguing. My commitment to this reading choice was reinforced when I was looking over some posts from that neglected blog earlier today. That other blog was started as a way for me to track progress on my New Year's Resolutions. One of those resolutions was to read all of the big Dickens novels. I made that goal in 2010. It's almost 9 years later and I'm still far from realizing it. Realizing Book Shelf Zero will require reading most of those big novels so making progress on one of these goals gets me closer to the other. I've talked myself out of these books for long enough. It's time to take on another one. I hope it's a fairly fast read. I've been sitting at 148 owned books to read for months!
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