Book Burden

Heretofore, books were not a problem for me. I loved them, unless I didn't, and could take and leave them amidst the competing threads of my life. I never thought of myself as a reader. Then Nancy came along, and, well, you can guess the rest. It's not just that she talks about books all the time, it's that she has a never-ending supply of them at her fingertips, and is always brimming with suggestions.

As a result I find myself staggering under the burden of a backlog of nine books. Nine. That's got to be at least six or seven more than I ever had to deal with before Nancy, and at any given time I was just as likely not to be reading a book, if you can imagine such a thing. (I understand that some of you can't.)

I'm currently well along in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn -- which I'm loving, by the way -- and on deck is a borrowed copy of The World Without Us. I've put on hold for the moment a book about the Giants that my brother bought for me, and I've got Allende and Patchett and McCracken cooling their heels in the wings. (I've got almost as many metaphors as books.) It's so bad that I can't even remember everything that I'm intending to read.

I'd bear up under it all, and stoically at that, but for the fear that still more is on the way. I expect I'm not going to get much sympathy from you lot, but understand at least that I'm coping with a new and bewildering world. Sort of like Francie in the book I'm reading. Only different.