28 December 2006

The Hazards of Borrowing Before Christmas

Why, oh why did I visit the library - twice! - in mid-December? Probably I should have known better, but I checked out a bunch of books anyway. The upshot of this is that on Christmas Day I had five books piled up on my bedroom floor waiting to be read and returned, and another four under the tree.

The power of novelty being what it is, I went straight for the new goodies rather than the ones with due dates attached. Now I’m faced with the challenge of finishing all seven remaining books in a shade under two weeks, or crossing my fingers and hoping I can renew the ones I need to. I know I should have set the new ones aside until I’d finished all the library volumes, but . . . well, my To Be Read piles are testimony to my ability to resist temptation.

Naturally I’m trying to justify it, by telling myself it would be bad manners to leave those thoughtfully-chosen presents gathering dust while I worked my way round to them. And I'm promising myself that next year I’ll do better. I’ll give my library card a rest and spend December reducing my TBR stacks in preparation for the forthcoming Lifeline Bookfest.

And with my luck, Christmas will bring me not a single book.

Considering that possibility, I’ll end up in the library again next December, getting out a handful of books . . . just in case.

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Header image shows detail of A Young Girl Reading by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, c. 1776