Our house is stuffed with books. I don’t choose the word “stuffed” lightly. There are times when no matter where I look in our house, there are stacks of books in sight. Shelves overflowing with books, floors littered with books, stacks of books sprouting on tables and chairs and the ends of beds. I don’t necessarily mind that we have so many books (although I do wish we had more shelving space for them). What frustrates me, instead, is that we have so many books I have yet to read. So many. Whenever I see a book I haven’t read yet, I get anxious.
Time’s running out. Why haven’t you read me yet? I might be a masterpiece, but you’d never know. You’re too busy downloading books to your Hoopla app or your Kindle, or getting a book on loan from the library.
When I check out a book from the library, I sometimes get the feeling of an unfaithful wife stepping out on her man. I’m having an affair with one of these outside books. What about all the perfectly good books I have at home? They’re just waiting for me to notice them, to pick them up and start reading. What’s holding me back?
We honestly have enough unread books in our house for me to read two or three a month for years before I’ve exhausted them all. And yet, I’m off to the library again this week to pick up a book on hold.
Maybe when I’ve finished with my current crop of library books, I can embark on a new challenge for the summer. Maybe I only read books that can be found in our house from June through August. No outside books. Just me and the unread stacks on the floor (and on the bed, and on the nightstand, and on the ledges of bookshelves).
I’ll have to make exceptions for my weekly book club’s book, but otherwise, I’m sticking close to home for my reading choices. I can always go back to checking out library books when fall begins, but for the summer at least, I can only check out materials from the home library.
It will be hard to forgo digital books, though. I have SO MANY on my Kindle that I want to read, and SO MANY from Hoopla that I want to download. But it’ll only be three months, and for three months, I can stick with paperbacks and hardcovers. This will have the added bonus of showing my kids that I can live a life without constant screen time. Yes, more often than not, I’m using my screens for reading purposes, but my kids don’t always get that. They just see mom staring at a screen for half a day (not counting my desktop, which I stare at for the other half of the day).
If I’m only reading the books on our shelves, then they’ll see me with my nose in a book. A real, physical book. That will be a good thing to model to my children.
(Not that they don’t already love reading and have their own noses in books constantly, but I know they feel the allure of the screens too. They often make their own “phones” out of paper or cardboard and “play games” and “open apps” on them, which is really just them pressing on the pictures they drew on the paper and playing pretend, but still. It’s adorable, but also worrying that they desire a phone so badly.)
I know this challenge will mean rearranging my reading list a bit. Instead of reading my digital copy of Kothar and the Demon Queen, I’ll have to switch to reading the Fred Saberhagen paperback I got for my birthday a couple of years ago, or the copy of Witch World my husband brought home from a resale shop a while back. Instead of reading a new ebook about the craft of writing, I’ll have to pick up a non-fiction book from home about some other skill or art. And instead of getting the latest political book from the library, I can dive into the history and philosophy books we already have.
We have tons of comic books I’ve never read, tons of pulp books I’ve never read, tons of history and science books I’ve never read, and tons of contemporary and classic novels I’ve never read. I really won’t lack for variety, I just need to shift my plan to accommodate what’s on our shelves and not what’s available via inter-library loan.
As soon as I finish the library and ebooks I’m currently reading, I’ll make the switch to at-home books only. No more stepping out. At least for the summer.
