Nov 26, 2013

Are To-Read lists still Vogue? Also, why is Vogue still on my To-Read list?

“Often on a wet day I begin counting up; what I've read and what I haven't read.” - Virginia Woolf


There are probably as many quotes about books and reading as there are books. It's difficult to find the right quote, because unlike finding a needle in a haystack, I can't just burn all the wrong quotes and wait to dig the right one from the ashes. Not that I've ever contemplated the easiest solution to the old needle/haystack problem or anything. No, instead you wind up reading quote after quote, each good but not quite relevant enough for your purposes until eventually you either stumble across the right one or you just give up and pick the next quote by Mark Twain.

This problem is even worse in books, because most of the wittiest quotes are only a sentence or two but books, well books aren't. So, instead of trying to have a right book for the situation I, like I hope most readers still do, have a to-read list. A special shelf of books that I feel are important enough to isolate and focus on. Well it was a shelf, but now that ebooks are starting to fill my life it's a little more complicated. From books, to ebooks, to magazines, my to-read grows faster than my have-read and I  begin to wonder why I even try to keep up.

Because I really like things, that's why. I really like reading about bears that have emigrated from "Darkest Peru", or murders on uppity liberal arts college campuses. So I read books like the Paddington Bear series, or The Secret History. I also really like looking at photos of stunningly designed dresses or well-tailored blazers. This means Vogue will always hold a place on my shortlist for best in-flight reading. I really like things, and words or pictures printed on paper is a wonderful portal to those things.

Because there really wasn't a ton of purpose to this besides me sharing some thoughts, let's make this meaningful. Tell me your thoughts on reading lists, share with me some of the books, magazines, comics or really anything you feel should be added to my To-Read list, and I'll give it some thought. Just please, no books about quotes.

No comments:

Post a Comment