Day 18

What book is next on your reading list?

This isn’t so much a prompt as a question, but it enables me to reveal one of my many eccentricities: my reading list is a spreadsheet which currently includes well over 2000 rows. These rows are individual authors, many of which include more than one book. I started this spreadsheet when I worked at the law firm in Chicago, and I remember it was the old building (the firm moved while I was employed there), which means I’ve been maintaining this list since around 2003.

Sometime last year, I decided to start over, since with a baby my time is more limited, so I began a clarified spreadsheet of books I especially want to read.

It is now 583 rows and counting.

I have never understood people who are like “I need book recommendations!” Who doesn’t know what to read, who even are you? I will never need a book recommendation. Ever.

As far as which thing to read next, I went through a period when I lived in Albuquerque of compulsively buying cheap used copies of books that were on my list from Powell’s through the mail, so I have something like 500 unread books in my possession, and I just go through the stacks pretty much at random.

Then, last year when I had Edith, I had to switch to ebooks, so as I explained previously, I started sort of combing through the sale section and compulsively buying whatever books were super cheap. Currently I have 76 unread fiction books in my ebook “pile” and 41 unread nonfiction. And I’ve just been reading them basically in order of purchase.

To answer the explicit question, the “next” book in each pile is probably Who Is Maud Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews and The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand.