Thursday, December 03, 2009

Namaste

(photo by David Castor at Wikimedia Commons)


So my daughter is in India, riding elephants and gazing upon the Taj Mahal and assorted World Heritage sites, and heading to Nepal in a few days so that she and a friend can make a trek up to Everest base camp and, if the airlines cooperate with their plans, wind up back at home late Christmas eve. And I, who dutifully tried not to bend over for a full six weeks so my back would heal, ruined all the progress on Sunday by mopping the kitchen and now have awful radiating pain shooting through my hips again. Why didn't I go out and have adventures before I got so old and decrepit?

I don't want to have the same regrets where my reading is concerned, so I'm putting together a reading strategy for the coming year, including reading titles from the Fill in the Gaps Project list I put together last spring, and a lot of the books from recent newly-acquired stacks. I'm going to try not to buy near as many new books next year (I bought around 120 in 2009), and I started Susan Hill's Howards End is On the Landing last night with an eye on using it as a guidebook of sorts to keeping me focused on the books already at hand.

Yeah, I know I've said this sort of thing before.

This time I mean it.

6 comments:

  1. Anonymous11:35 AM

    Me too. I have an uncomfortably large number of unread books sitting around here. And some I'd like to re-read. If only authors would stop putting out so many tantalizing new ones.

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  2. Good luck with that. I've gone on two binges since I made my latest avowal to quit, the most recent wagon-fall-off last night at the comic store, which was having a buy one get one half off sale, so I bought 6. Sigh.

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  3. We have been on a very strict budget for a couple of years now, so I do all my book-acquiring at the library. It does mean that I read them, because otherwise I either stack up fines or I get that hollow feeling that means I sent a book back unread and unloved.

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  4. Lovely picture. Good luck with keeping down the book buying, for me it's harder than not buying clothes. Maybe with all the money you save you can go out and have a little (non-bending) adventure of your own.

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  5. I like that view of the Taj; it's not one I've seen often.

    At least you have a plan for your reading. That's something.

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  6. With a bad back there is nothing to do but sit or lay comfortably and read, read, read! Hope your daughter has a fun and safe trip and I hope your back is better soon!

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