Too Many Books Spoil The ?

Sadly and much to my dismay I couldn't think of a witty and clever rhyming word to chuck in the title. If I was prone to dressing in dark clothes and listening to Joy Division a lot I could have used the word "goth" and you'd have no doubt chuckled at my wordy dexterity. Nor am I a moth. or a cloth even, so we're left with a question mark. Feel free to submit a suggestion if you have one.

Reading is one of my most enjoyed activities. I do it voraciously and have done for many years. I read all sorts of things; books, both fiction and that other boring type, magazines, blogs and just about anything else you can think of that displays the written or the virtual word. There's rarely a point in my life when I don't have at least one fictional book, one non fictional one and a couple of magazines on the go.

My Kindle has been one of the best presents I've ever received, enabling me to carry around a huge volume of books wherever I go. Currently it has forty one of the virtual books on board and, according to those nice Amazon people, that means it will hold another thousand or more before it gives up the ghost.

Yet lately, say in the last month or so, I've been struggling to find that enthusiasm to read. I've munched my way through a few decent novels, Juliet Naked by Nick Hornby and Gypsy Boy by Mikey Walsh are two that were particularly memorable, but am now failing to feel that attraction, that can't put it down because I NEED to find out what happens next feeling that a good book instills.

As well as the Kindle I've got more than twenty proper books, those ones made out of paper, wood and the environment, waiting patiently on the shelves for me. The Chinaman is firmly placed at number one in that group, yet all I've done so far is read a couple of pages and thought that it sounds as fantastic as all you lot say it is.

I've been wondering why I've failed to find the big motivation to read. I don't think that lack of time is a viable excuse as I often read in bed or in those in between moments and I do get quite a lot of time alone, when C or the girls aren't around.

Earlier today I discovered something on the Kindle that I didn't realise it could do; collections. Yes I can make a collection, give it a name and then chuck books into it. Until my discovery I thought that all the books had to be listed individually, though I knew that they could be sorted in several different ways.

I played around with the feature for a bit, making a Terry Pratchett collection and bunging the TP books in there. Then, getting a bit more confident and serious about things, I made two more collections. One is called "Fiction Read" and the other called "Currently Reading". Why I called it "Fiction Read" instead of "Read Fiction" I'm not sure about, but it made sense at the time.

As time marches on I reckon I'll categorise a bit more, perhaps making a management collection, though I might call it "Mgmt" or even "Mgmnt" and maybe a self help section. I might throw in a "Fiction not read" and might get rid of the Terry P section as the principle of filing by author runs in contradiction to that of filing by genre. It seems that each book can only go in one collection so the five TP books I have, though read, nay devoured, are in the TP collection rather than the "Fiction read" one. I'm a rebel like that.

The thing is though, the "Currently Reading" collection has eleven, yes eleven titles in it. Four of them I'd class as self help, three I consider "Mgmnt" and four are firmly in the fiction category.

As I look at them I realise that there are too many, that's the crux of my problem, I'm spreading myself too thinly, with the result that I can't focus on one book. Compounding the problem is the fact that I'm quite enjoying every single one of them and therefore reluctant to put any on the back burner.

Do I persevere with the magnificent eleven, knowing that I may well end up not remembering any of them that well, or do I choose a few to put on the back burner and come back to later?

Vut too doo?