Browsing my bookshelf, I discovered a few books I haven't read; they've been laid sandwiched between well-thumbed novels and out-of-date textbooks for upwards of five years. I bought them on a whim and did not even afford them a cursory glance. Knowing I had several unread books, I kept buying more, almost as if the act of buying the books, the idea of eventually reading them, was more attractive than actually reading them.
This sort of romanticizing of eventually doing this and eventually doing that underscores the lives of many modern people. We buy too many books, only to not read them, buy too many clothes, only to not wear them, and buy too much food, only to not eat them. We accumulate stuff in the hopes that just collecting these things will passively lead to happiness. I'm going to do this and this and this, we tell ourselves, but never actually do them. We take the first step and stop, distracted by something else, and take one step towards that and stop.
I've hoped to break this cycle for years, stop just making plans but to also fulfill them. It's too easy to buy the book and leave it unread. In the theme of this, here is a list of books I own that I have not read and will read:
Marcus Aurelius: A Life by Frank McLynn
The Element Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures by John and Caitlin Matthews
Armies of Pestilence: The Impact of Disease on History by R.S. Bray
Lost Cities by M.T. Guaitoli and S. Rambaldi
China's Urban Villagers: Changing Life in a Beijing Suburb by Norman A. Chance
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
The Vampire: His Kith and Kin by Montague Summers
Medieval Wordbook by Madeleine Pelner Cosman
Happy reading!
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