I recently reorganized my bookshelves. I straightened and categorized the books, and I separated out all of the books that I haven’t read and that I hope to read sooner rather than later. These are books that I’ve bought at the store, received as gifts, and unearthed on bookfinding expeditions. There are 31 of them. For a while now, I’ve had a quite large “to read” pile, and I add titles almost every week, it seems. The problem is that stacks of books are constantly getting pushed aside while I read whatever book I’m most excited about at the moment. There’s not really anything wrong with this except that there are books that I really would like to read, but never seem to get around to it. So, since I obviously am not to be trusted, I have decided to take some of the decision making out of my hands: I have set aside a special shelf to hold my new “Reading Queue.” On it are all of the books that I own and would like to read but haven’t yet. From this shelf full of books, I will randomly select the next one to read. Before I get into that though, here’s my reading queue, some of the books that will keep me occupied during the coming year:
- Without Feathers by Woody Allen
- The Summer Game by Roger Angell
- Once More Around the Park: A Baseball Reader by Roger Angell
- Game Time: A Baseball Companion by Roger Angell
- An Army at Dawn by Rick Atkinson
- The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles
- The Hole in the Flag by Andrei Codrescu
- Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes
- Paris Trout by Pete Dexter
- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
- The Last Amateurs by John Feinstein
- A Season on the Brink by John Feinstein
- Living to Tell the Tale by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Last Train to Memphis by Peter Guralnick
- The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard
- Round Rock by Michelle Huneven
- The Known World by Edward P. Jones
- Balkan Ghosts by Robert D. Kaplan
- Shah of Shahs by Ryszard Kapuscinski
- The Price of Admiralty by John Keegan
- Everything’s Eventual by Stephen King
- Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis
- The Coming of Rain by Richard Marius
- The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
- Looking for a Ship by John McPhee
- Moviegoer by Walker Percy
- Fraud by David Rakoff
- The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat by Oliver Sacks
- East of Eden by John Steinbeck
- Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
- Mr. Jefferson’s University by Garry Wills
Once I had a full shelf to pick from, the only question was how to pick randomly. I thought about writing down names and picking out of hat, but that seemed like a pain, and I would have had to go look for a hat, so instead I located a random number generator to help me make my choice. I’m going back east tomorrow for two weeks, so I picked three books to take with me: Everything’s Eventual, Paris Trout, and Don Quixote. I’m guessing most folks will be pretty busy over the next couple of weeks, and so will I, so I’ll probably only post a couple of times while I’m gone. They should be good, though. Look for “My Year in Books” and a post about the books I gave as gifts. Happy Holidays, all.
