After sprinting through the last bit of Surface Detail (things always get good when a bunch of related but separate story lines come together), I am down to my final Culture novel, Matter. There's still the short story collection after Matter, but I am more about the novels than short stories. I thought about picking up Matter right away (it was just sitting on my nightstand), but I decided to save that book for a bit. I've enjoyed this series. There is no reason to rush to the last book (this is no Harry Potter or other series where each book is part of a larger narrative, the Culture books are just stories that take place in the same world, each book is complete in and of itself). I picked up a different book that has been on my nightstand for many months, a book about the Civil War called The Destructive War. I only planned to read a few pages to pass the time, but I ended up getting drawn into the book. I've read the first chapter. We'll see if it's something I want to stick with.
I didn't put books about the Civil War on my books to read before going back to Disney World at the end of August list. Summer reading lists are not something I've done in the past, but I'm trying to trick myself into being more about the books on my shelf than the books I can borrow electronically. I've read 19 books this year but only 4 of them are physical books that I own. The list is short, only 4 items (coincidentally), but there is no lock that I will address each of the points over the next 70 or so days.
Item 1, I want to finish the Culture novels (which really means read Matter). This will be the first series from the NPR list that I will have read in its entirety after starting my pursuit of completing the list. It's been a fun trip, but Matter is not exactly a thin book. It took me well over a month to read Surface Detail. I have managed to extricate myself from my Tetris 99 mania, but I still sacrifice plenty of reading time to play that game. I could use up a big chunk of my summer on this one fat book if I don't make an effort to get through it relatively quickly.
Item 2, read one of the ebooks that I own. I don't even remember what I have sitting in my virtual shelf it's been so long since I scrolled deep enough into my Kindle library to take a look at my options. Most of them are pretty long books (which is why I haven't read them yet). I will have to let my library books streak end a bit to make this one happen, but that is kind of the point of the exercise. In flipping through my options, there are a few that hit me as potentially interesting. This could be worth pursuing in earnest sooner rather than later (particularly as I only have one booked checked out from the library at the moment).
Item 3, another book from the top shelf of the book case in my garage. I filled this shelf with especially interesting books a few years ago. They were all unread at that point. I've read about half of the shelf, at least as defined by the amount of space taken up by the books. I see these books all the time when I'm on the treadmill or using the rowing machine. Might be time to take a few down and read the back to see if any of them pique my interest.
Item 4, Roth. There is one book in particular that I had in my mind when I wrote that one down. It's been off the shelf and on the floor under a chair in the room where we play video games for a couple of months. I'm always intimidated to read Roth until I start reading him and realize how pleasurable it is to read his writing. This particular book is hardcover, which I never really enjoy reading, but it's probably a fairly quick read.
We'll see how success I am in getting myself oriented back towards Book Shelf Zero with this list. I'm back to 146 books remaining. I'm almost a quarter of the way finished from the inception of this insane little project.
