You know, finding time to read has gotten so much harder lately. When I really want to just sit, relax, and unwind, my mind is all over the map, though, and I can’t focus. Instead, I’ve been using mindless television shows that don’t challenge my poor brain like a book does. And it’s sad, too, because there are so many books I have here that are potential good reads. In fact, I have two books I am currently in the process of reading that are essentially on pause while I finish doing this two-jobs-at-one-time experiment that has driven me quite mad over the course of the past six weeks.
Here are the two books that are currently on hold:
Pure, by Julianna Baggott, is yet another one of those post-apocalyptic tour de forces that have become quite popular lately, along the lines of The Hunger Games, The Selection, Prodigy, and Delirium, but for some reason it lacks the push, the impetus that made me inhale those other books like they were the sweetest smelling roses. I’m not saying that Pure is bad, but maybe I’ve just gotten to my limit in the genre and I need to come back to it at a later date.
Deeply Odd is the umpteenth book in Dean Koontz’s Odd Thomas series that is just as quirky as the first one. It’s this book that makes me realize there must be something with how my brain is wired with these two jobs that is messing with me, because this is a good book (don’t get me started on the less than stellar 55 Shadow Street that I have yet to finish, and for the first time with a Dean Koontz book, I don’t think I will finish) and a return to form for the master of the supernatural.
Both books are staring at me from the shelf they’ve been relegated to for the moment, chastising me with their bookmarks facing out. Speaking of bookmarks, I lose them like they’re umbrellas and it’s the rainy season. Honestly, I don’t know what vortex they disappear into, but they never seem to make it back home where they belong. Perhaps some of them have been left in library books when I’ve returned them, or they’ve slipped out en route somewhere, but regardless, they’re gone, and I am forced into using receipts from Barnes & Noble and Price Chopper.
Tangent over. I just had to get that out. Anyway…
Those books are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to books in my queue that I want to read but have taken a back seat for the moment. Other books include:
Thirst, Volume 4, by Christopher Pike
The Girl in the Steel Corset, by Kady Cross
The Bridge On the Drina, by Ivo Andric
Off Season, by Ann Rivers Siddon
Tennis and the Meaning of Life, edited by Jay Jennings
The Possibility of Everything, by Hope Edelman
The Haunted, by Bentley Little
And those are just books already in my personal collection that I’ve purchased for chump change but that are either from authors I’ve loved before, or that have captivating summaries. Don’t even get me started on all the other books out there that are also on the “to read” list. I’m sure if I laid them all out spine to spine it would lead from here to Jamaica (careful, some of the books would be wet). But I have to find the time, and it’s hard. You know how it is!
I remember I used to tell people that it’s easy to find time for things you love, but lately that hasn’t been the case for me, or at least not for all the things I love. Since I’ve been writing more and more recently, that has taken up a fairly large amount of my “free” time. Maintaining this blog, conversing with others about their blogs, writing guest blog posts, and currently working on a new novel, it all adds up. And when I’m writing, I can’t be reading. Not to mention that I founded and maintain a book club that reads a new book every month as well, so when I do find that time it’s usually spent on the book we’ve chosen, not on the ones in my queue (unless they dovetail, which would be sweeeeet).
Time is fleeting, which is why I don’t waste much of it on things that don’t matter or that don’t interest me. I used to finish every single book I started, but now I just don’t want to throw away my time like that on books that don’t grab me and make me their concubine. That helps somewhat with my conundrum of so many books to read. Some of them weed themselves out along the way, but more are added to take their place.
And that’s okay. I just have to find more time somewhere.
Sam
Sam's Online Journal 