Thursday, July 16, 2009

The Obsession of my Obsession

It's a relatively well known fact that I like to read. (I might even have a sickness.)

But this week's Booking Through Thursday question asks me to self-diagnose my sickness (and uses medical lingo to boot.) Here's what was asked:

"Do you keep all your unread books together, like books in a waiting room? Or are they scattered throughout your shelves, mingling like party-goers waiting for the host to come along?"
I fall into the "waiting room" group of organizers.

I keep all of my TBR books tidily ordered on two book cases in my bedroom. I first sort them into one of four categories: Literary Fiction, Commercial Fiction/Memoir, YA Literary Fiction, or YA Commercial Fiction. I then shelve them by chronological date of original publication and try my best to read the oldest ones first (but sometimes I get a little out-of-hand and read a book the same day I bought it).

Here's the deal, folks: I do the sorting by category thing because I try to rotate my reading evenly amongst all four so that can be more "balanced" in my reading. But I fail. Big time. I over-indulge. For example, right now, I just can't stand the idea of reading something heavy. It's summer, I should be light. So what did I do? I ripped all of those YA Commercial Fiction books off my shelf and piled them up in order and I'm making a YA glutton out of myself. (You might have noticed this by the recent string of book reviews that I've posted in the past week here, here, here, here, here, and here. With another one that should be posted today.)

Whew, seven books in one week. Pretty good, right? Sure, they're all pretty fluffy (okay, really fluffy), but it makes me feel good to get my book shelves trimmed down. I'm clearly rationalizing, so maybe my sickness is mental (or psychosomatic).

3 comments:

Harvee said...

Hi:
You've been tagged to do the I Cannot Tell a Lie meme. Here's what the meme is about:

"Sometimes you can learn more about a person by what they don’t tell you. Sometimes you can learn a lot from the things they just make up. If you are tagged with this Meme, lie to me. Then tag 7 other folks (one for each deadly sin) and hope they can lie."

You can see how it works over at my blog, http://www.bookbirddog.blosspot.com

JoAnn said...

I have the 'waiting room' bookshelves in my bedroom too, but don't organize tbr's beyond that. Summer is a good time for light reading...nothing too heavy for me until fall ;-)

gautami tripathy said...

I like my books mixed. And I know exactly where a particular book is placed!

TBR: mixed reactions?