And What I'm Not(!) Reading Now: Notes

Do you remember when I was doing this?  Sharing the state of my nightstand and the books on it?

And then I did this and cleaned it all out!  I finished those three books in the bottom photo.  I think I still have some unfinished books in that top photo.  I can't quite see the spines but I may well have returned a number of them to my bookshelves and a few I 'wanted' to finish but they are still sitting there waiting.  I just have this constant compulsion to start new books.  And my reading is all over the place, which I guess is just the new normal for my reading these days.  

I wonder if this is representative of my mind or my life--unable to finish what I set out to do, eager to begin new projects, but my attention and desires and interests all over the place.  I think we are almost too close to the end of the year to create a master list of books I really want to finish before the years runs out (in order to have a neat and tidy night table to start 2019 with).  I can make a list, but the problem is whether I can actually read from it exclusively without adding ever more new books to my reading pile.  Okay, so sure, let's go ahead and make that list.  Or lists as you see.

2018 Finishes Wishlist:

1. Lovesong, Alex Miller
2. Curtain Call, Anthony Quinn*
3. The Dragon Man, Garry Disher
4. November Road, Lou Berney
5. E is for Evidence, Sue Grafton*
6. The Clockmaker’s Daughter, Kate Morton*
7. The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson
8. Best American Science and Nature Writing, 2018*
9. Second Rider, Alex Beer
10. As yet to be decided November prompt

The Waiting List:

1. The Killing Floor, Lee Child
2. Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows, Balli Kaur Jaswal
3. Believing the Lie, Elizabeth George
4. My True Love Lifes, Glen Offord

The Wishful Wishlist:

1. Custom of the Country, Edith Wharton
2. Sand, Wolfgang Herrndorf
3. IQ84, Haruki Murakami
4. Wild Strawberries, Angela Thirkell

The top list are books I am actively reading and hope I will finish in any case sooner (this year) rather than later.  The asterisks are for books I want to finish and will start another or the next (in the series) as soon as I am done.  The middle list are books I was reading this year, not so long ago, that just fell to the bottom of the reading pile.  Now I need to decide whether I do want to keep going or maybe they should go back to the shelves.  And the bottom pile are books I "want" to finish, but there is just not as much reading time in my life as I need to get them all read.  The Murakami is good and I often think of picking it up, but it is just such a big book that maybe it is not feasible to try and finish (along with all the other books, that is).  Oh, poor Angela Thirkell.  She is quite the holdover.  The Herrndorf is also really good, but as with NYRB Classics, it is something that takes time and effort--a good read but not a quick one (which is good, but you know how it goes--that time thing again).  The Wharton will sit there forever I fear.  Because I can't seem to get going on Classics this year.  

I'll never be able to change my reading habits I fear.  So every year I will go through this clean up process the closer the end of the year comes.  

(And maybe this is not a good time to admit that I have library books waiting on the hold shelf, which I am going to pick up soon).  Ah well, it's all good, though.  I am reading lots of really good books as you can see.  It's the journey, not the destination, right?