My bookcases are crammed with two kinds of books: the kinds of books I like to read and the kinds of books I think I like to read. The latter are betrayed by pristine, telltale bookmarks emerging from their non-dogeared pages, usually about a quarter of the way through, sometimes as far as half. "I'll come back to this book when I'm more in the mood for this kind of thing," I promise myself, but seldom do. Once such a book has been passed over or put to one side, it is never brought to mind again. "The mood," whatever that might be in literary terms, does not return.
Perhaps it's a seasonal thing. A certain book might convey a wintry feel and it happens to be August. Another book might seem redolent of heavy rains and thunder clouds but there's been nothing but bright sunshine for weeks. For example, I purchased a novel by Andrea Camilleri, set in the heat of Sicily, that I thought might provide a little Mediterranean escape for me in mid-December. I couldn't get past the first sun-baked, sweat-soaked chapter and stuck my freezing nose in a history of Stalingrad instead.
Many of the neglected books are nineteenth century novels; books I not only think I like to read but also think I *should* read. That unopened copy of The Mill On The Floss has been sitting forlorn in my bookcase for as long as that unopened package of dental floss has been abandoned in my medicine cabinet. I need to get around to both of them one of these days. I'm fortunate there is no 'sell-by-date' for paperbacks.
Although it would interesting if unread books did begin to rot like uneaten food left in the back of the fridge. "Does anyone want this old copy of Moby Dick that's been in the bookcase since last February?" You could demand of your family members. "It's starting to smell bad and there's a layer of green mold all over chapters five through thirty-seven. Plus, I need to make room for this fresh translation of Proust that Amazon just delivered."
Ultimately, of course, the phrase "books I think I like to read" is merely a less self-deprecating version of "I'm not as smart as I want to think I am." Fortunately, it contains the qualifying inference that, although I don't read those particular weighty tomes, I'm still not as stupid as most other people because I do actually read some tomes, even if my choices are not the weightiest available. I'm led to understand that this is what is known as a humble brag in modern Internet parlance.
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