I Am Forced to Consider the Once-Impossible-to-Contemplate Notion That Maybe You Can Have Too Many Books.

I have to admit it. My book-buying addiction has gotten completely out of hand. My bedroom is pretty much filled with unread books (which I laughably refer to as my To-Read-Pile, but which is actually about sixteen piles so high they tend to collapse spontaneously under their own weight). It's been a very long time since I counted them -- frankly, I've been afraid of what the result would be -- but the last time I did, the tally was over 400. It's got to be well over 500 by now. Ah, hell, who am I kidding... It's probably well over 600. Even at my old reading speeds, before the internet came along and gobbled up the lion's share of my free time, that'd take me four years or so to get through. These days, it'd probably be more like twice that. And still it keeps growing, and growing, and growing...

It's now long since passed the point where it's become completely unmanagable. I no longer even know what books I have. I bought the same Stephen King collection twice and didn't realize it for months. I keep finding myself thinking, "Ooh, I should get that book... Oh, wait, do I have it already?" and not having any idea what the answer is. And when I decide I want to read something specific that I know I do have, it sometimes takes me 15 minutes just to find it. On one memorable occasion, I spent a couple of hours looking for a book I was sure I had, only to realize eventually that I'd never actually bought it. I did try to organize the Pile once, only to find the task entirely too daunting to complete. And even the rough semblence of alphabetical order I managed quickly deteriorated back into chaos as new books got added to the piles (and the old books got randomly rearranged by virtue of falling over repeatedly and getting haphazardly piled back up again).

It is clearly time -- in fact, more than time -- for me to Do Something. I certainly need to make another go at getting the books organized, though I suspect that's a job I'll keep putting off for as long as possible. Beyond that, though, I mainly need to stop buying so damned many books. To that end, I am making a resolution: Starting in August, the number of books purchased or ordered in a given month is not to exceed the number of books read in the previous month. Period. I don't care if there's a library sale, even. Now, I've made resolutions like this before, but they've never lasted very long, which is why I'm making this one in public. Even if nobody reading this blog actually cares, having said it here, I will feel honor-bound to keep to it. Or so the theory goes, anyway.

Of course, the other thing I really need to do is to get off the internet once in a while and spend more time reading the way I used to. But I'm trying to be a bit realistic, here...