Finishing a To-Read Pile: Impossible!
My to-read pile is a mile high. My list of books I want to read is even longer. My stack of resources of books I may want to read (newsletters, blogs, recommendations) is unending.
And still I went into the bookstore the other day and bought three books I’d never heard of.
Oh, the guilt! There are SO many books, yet I just “jumped the queue” with these three? Yes, they may sit on that growing to-read pile for days (months, years—who’s kidding who) or I may pick them up tomorrow because they’re my shiny new thing, but how could I do that to my lovingly curated piles and lists?
In other words, how can I consume every book that interests me?
Obviously, you can’t. Millions of books are published each year. Piled onto the millions of books published the year before, and the year before that, and all the classics you haven’t read and all the books you want to re-read and you are looking at the metaphorical equivalent of turning over every grain of sand in the world.
What to do with that bittersweet misery? Bitter—you can’t read everything; sweet—there’s an abundance of amazing choice.
Turn it into a mindfulness moment. Enjoy the book in front of you, no matter where it is/is not on your to-read list. If you’re drowning in guilt over all the books you want to read, you might as well ditch the guilt and just drown in the stories you are reading. 🙂