The Guilty Pile.

Months and months ago Rosy Thornton sent me an email asking if I'd like a copy of ‘The Tapestry of Love’ to read. Yes please I said because I’d heard good things about it and thought it sounded just the thing that I was looking for. I’ve still not read it. I also have a copy of Richard Mabey’s ‘Weeds’ which I’ve read 3 chapters of, was fascinated by, and haven’t got any further with, and perhaps most guilty of all is ‘The Captain’s Wife’ by Kirsten McKenzie. I’ve had ‘The Captain’s Wife’ since August; a lovely lady from John Murray had said to let her know if I wanted anything. I really liked McKenzie’s ‘The Chapel at the Edge of the World’ and so asked for this her second book. It arrived, I got really excited, the Scottish one read and loved it, and I still haven’t managed to open it.

The problem is that all these books are hardbacks and I really struggle with hardbacks. They don’t fit in my bag (which is small to fit in the teeny tiny lockers we have at work) and as most my reading is done on work breaks and bus trips books that don’t fit in my bag suffer. I gave up trying to read two books at once because I never seemed to finish either or any of them. I never seem to be at home for more than a few hours at a time so the chance of reading a book in one session is ever diminishing... See the excuses piling up – why in the time it’s taken me to write all this down I could probably have read a couple of chapters.

These three are the tip of an unread iceberg but they’re the only ones that induce guilt, partly because in accepting (or soliciting) them I made a bargain if only with myself to read promptly. Partly because I know I’ll get to most those other books (perhaps not the Milton or Dante – but all the rest for sure) in the fullness of time and when I’m in the right mood – but hardbacks... there are dozens of times I’ve meant to pick up all of these three and just haven’t. Anyway the point of writing all this down is as a prompt to self to get on with it. I procrastinate far too much so this is me getting my act together and setting myself a goal which should be easy to reach – hopefully the goal reaching thing will become a habit and I’ll be able to tackle hardbacks any old time.