Sunday Salon

Blogging has been light and will likely continue that way, as I’m off on a longish trip this Friday. I’m getting pretty antsy about it, just because I’m not a fan of being away from my own home for ten days, and it’s going to involve a bunch of travel to several different places. Part of the trip is for work, but I’ll also be visiting my family, my best friend, and then jumping to the other side of the country for my first ever trip to the West Coast.

Now, normally I might be saying something like, “What are some good regional-ish books about Oregon?” to get into the spirit. But I’ve been contemplating something…radical for the past few days: a book-acquisition moratorium. There, I’ve said it. I already want to take it back. It’s beautiful October; how can I resist the drive down to Hyde Park, the dangerous walk down 57th St…not to mention the danger of the internets themselves. Ideally I would kick my habit through the end of the year, but that’s just ridiculous. Perhaps until Thanksgiving weekend? I can’t really be expected to do Christmas shopping without getting stuff for myself at the same time after all.

Maybe this isn’t the best method for me anyway. The goal here is to get through more of what I already have on the shelf, but forcing myself to do that without buying anything tends to be as confining as making book lists and trying to stick with them. It does not work for me. I should have some kind of formula instead: finish five off the shelf, buy one.

Oh dear. I was just going through my records to see what my pattern had been looking like lately, and out of approximately 71 books read this year, only 6 of them were acquired before this year—including one that was a re-read! That is not very good progress. Ach.