Some progress but life has a bad habit of getting in the way

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!

Back to 148...and time to find something new to read

I finished Inversions earlier in the week. It's the fifth book that I've read of the Culture series. The reviews complain that this book wasn't really a part of that series as there are no massive star ships or sentient drones. Those things are part of the story, we just don't see them. We get to experience the Culture from the outside. It's a very clever way to add depth and significance to a sprawling space opera.

I was reading a library ebook while wrapping up Inversions, but my loan period ended before I could finish it.That doesn't mean that I wasn't able to finish the book, Outline by Rachel Cusk, though. I have an old Kindle Fire that has been sitting in a kitchen drawer for years. I've gone back to it after getting a crack in the screen of my phone. I was able to keep reading my expired book on this device right up until this morning when I finished the book. Assuming this wasn't a one time fluke event, this could be a very handy hack for taking some of the pressure off of my library reads. Getting these books from the 21st Century canon via the library has been a great way to expand my reading breadth without buying a bunch of books. I just skimmed the surface of Outline. That book was deep while being well written and a pleasure to read. It's the first of a trilogy. I will make an effort to go deeper on the next two volumes (I already have a hold on book 2).

That additional time could be handy as I start reading the next book in the Old Man's War series. My wait for book 3 wasn't as long as my wait for book 2, but that doesn't mean I want to let my loan period end without finishing the book. These are pretty quick reads so I don't feel like I will have too much pressure to get it done before my loan period ends, but knowing I can go a couple of days over will be helpful if my reading motivation wanes around running my second marathon ever, the Marine Corps Marathon in DC, this weekend.

While my next ebook selection is clear, I'm a bit up in the air about which print book to read next. My first thought was to pick up one of my long neglected Dickens books. Every year I say I'm going to read another of his major works, but they just never seem to rise to the top of my reading pile. Committing to a Dickens book is not a trivial matter. The books are thick and usually start slow. They get very rollicking by the end, but getting to that point can be a bit of a drag. Overcoming this kind of inertia is exactly the point of Book Shelf Zero so perhaps now is the perfect time to make a move on one of these monsters. Martin Chuzzlewit was a big part of The Eyre Affair so I was thinking of reading that one next. Dombey and Son is just so damn long (I made it about half way through that one before bailing on it several years ago) and my previous attempts at Oliver Twist have never gotten very far. Little Dorritt is also an option, but I really have nothing compelling me to read about people in a debtor's prison. Maybe I'll just go with the shorter of Martin Chuzzlewit and Little Dorritt.