Swine Flu, or The Books I'll Read During The Coming Pandemic

Often I think that time could be measured in books bought and read. There's a rush of pleasure that accompanies the purchase of a book, which may the reason I find amazon so enticing - there's the rush of the order as well as one with its arrival. And while there is a simple contentment in rereading familiar words in an old friend, there's a great excitement when you uncover words for the first time.

Bibliophilia could easily be my religion.

There's a limit to the time in which I have to practice it, though, and consequently, at times my pursuit of the flush of purchase allows me to get ahead of myself. It's easy to purchase multiple books in a matter of minutes. Even as quickly as I read, though, it's not quite so easy to devour a new book, especially with some nonfiction titles.

Consequently, at the beginning of 2009, I had some forty-five books that I had owned for at least seven months, yet had not read. In some cases, it was a mere seven months. In other cases, it was a year or two. In at least one case, it's been six or seven years. There's always something new on the horizon, so it becomes all too easy to push some books back to the bottom of my priority list.

Happily, though, I've whittled this list into something a bit more manageable. I decided to discard twelve books. Most of them have already found new homes through paperbackswap. I've read thirteen more.

That only leaves twenty books.

My goal is relatively simple. At the end of calendar year 2009, the only book in my home that I haven't read at least once should have a bookmark in it. Alternatively, I should have no book in my home that I haven't read.

The most enjoyable book that I've read, so far, would probably be 1491. It's engaging and thorough, without being too simplistic.

Embarrassingly for this former biology major, the book I'm currently reading is The Origin of Species. Embarrassing solely because I feel I should have read it long before this - and, indeed, it's the book that has been in my house, unread, longer than any other.

I'm most looking forward to finally making time for A Disturbance of Fate, though there are several others that, obviously, look quite interesting.

This, of course, assumes that we don't all die of swine flu before the summer's end.