Friday, February 06, 2009

The Best-Laid Plans

I had these grand plans for my sabbatical. I imagined a reading odyssey, where I would chew voraciously through my book backlog. Imagine how much you could read if you had no job, right?

It didn't quite work out that way. Back in late October I listed 24 unread books waiting for my attention. In early November I'd read one but three more had been added to the pile. Turns out that this is my downfall: getting books faster than I can read them. And OK, yes the weather was much nicer during my sabbatical than I expected, meaning less time inside reading than I was imagining, but really the problem boils down to the fact that I tend to read the books I most recently acquired, and I tend to read books slower than I acquire them. I'm operating a LIFO queue with a mean arrival rate greater than the mean depletion rate.

So here I am, three months later, and how many of the 24 have I read? Actually, just the one. Here's what I've actually got through:

This young lady I met the other day on Shotwell Street. It was her birthday.

Birthday Girl

1 comment:

Sue Hepworth said...

I'm so pleased you enjoyed Light of Day - i read it sitting in The Tattered Cover when I came to visit you in Denver.