BOOK SORT

Book Sort

Today I opened two windows to air out the bedroom after its hermetic winter, and in negotiating the narrow space on my side of the bed to do that, I toppled two of the stacks of books and magazines on my side of the bed. That inspired a determination to eliminate this literary jumble. My wife has her own stacks on her side, I leave them to her to manage. I am focusing on my own stacks, these books and magazines all intermingled over the months, five stacks of them next to an already filled 3-foot-wide, four-shelf bookcase that I bought and assembled exactly to avert this kind of mess.

I plan to read all of them, of course … the books, that is … the magazines I have already glanced through and studied the indices for articles likely to be of particular interest. The magazines remaining here are ones that have articles in them that I plan to read. There are perhaps 20 New Yorkers, three Old-Time Heralds, too many issues of Poetry to count, several Acoustic Guitar editions and an Autoharp Quarterly or two … and so on.

You see, I get sidetracked so easily. One day I am reading how to restore the Northwest forests, the next a silly but well-written detective novel by a little-known Northwest writer who like myself is a former journalist. Well, at least there’s a commonality in that instance: both are set in the Northwest. Then there is Poets on The Peaks, which I keep returning to because it involves writers and an experience dear to my heart, the so-called Beats and the spending of summers on fire lookouts. Perhaps I need to read only books on or set in the Great Northwest. That would definitely thin the ranks.

Most recently added is a book loaned to me by an old friend. It attempts to unravel the mystery of why particular areas and cultures have seized dominance in the world’s evolutionary history even though other areas seemed to have all the same necessary ingredients for similar power. It is an engaging book, and was good reading while on vacation, but now that we are home and I am busy during the day, I find that reading it at bedtime results in a rapidly diminishing comprehension and a quick and effective drowsiness. It has sunk lower in its stack and now has three books ahead of it (I try to stack these in the order I plan to read them).

I am determined to sort these books and magazines and face up to eliminating the ones I know in my heart that I am not truly eager to read, or in fact have little or no interest in reading. I plan to keep only what I really want to read and give the rest away or sell them.

But wait! Here’s The Dragon Can’t Dance! I’ve been meaning to read this for ages! It had gotten buried in one of my stacks. I’ll just take a short break and read a bit of it before continuing this project …

Bob Loomis
06-06-2009
Concord CA