Tonight, I decided to count the number of books that are sitting on my bedside table (This is where I put the books that I am fully intending to read — basically my Book To-Do list.) There are 30 books on the table (and under the table, and next to the table…). Of those books, I have started 9.
Kind of scary. What does it say about me that I have so many, and that I have started so many, yet left them unfinished? Do I have ADD? Or are they just not very good?
I think the answer is: neither. They’re all good. There was a great essay by Joe Queenan in last Sunday’s (8/6) New York Times Book Review (subscription required) about this very issue, and I liked the author’s conclusion. He wrote:
But I am never reading fewer than 25 books. I am not talking about books I have delved into, perused and set aside, like “Finnegans Wake” or Pamela Anderson’s first novel — that would get me up way over a hundred. I am talking about books I am actively reading, books that are on my nightstand and are not leaving there until I am done with them. Right now, the number is 27. …
Friends say that I suffer from a short attention span, but exactly the opposite is true. I do not stop reading books because I lose interest in them; if anything, I have too long an attention span, one that allows me to read dozens of books simultaneously without losing interest in any of them. Moreover, I have an excellent memory that allows me to suspend reading, pick up a book six months later, and not miss a beat. …
I used to think that I kept stopping and starting books because I could never find the right one. Untrue. All these books are the right one. It’s the fact that all these books are generally so good that makes me stop reading them, as I am in no hurry to finish; the bad ones I whip through in a few hours. The problem is, there are just too many good books. Reading is like being in a candy shop, or the Frick: Just because you love the Rembrandts and the Van Dycks doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be tempted by the Titians and Bellinis.
I couldn’t agree more. I usually don’t put a book down because I don’t like it; I put it down either because I want to savor it or because something else has caught my eye. Of course, sometimes a book comes along (most recently, it was Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep) that I simply can’t put down, that I must read, to the detriment of almost everything else in my life. But in between those page-turners are the other books, those relegated to the purgatory between the bookstore and the bookshelf, that sit gathering dust on the Guantanamo of my bedside table.
How many books are you in the middle of? And what was the last book that you couldn’t put down? Send in a comment, below.