Well, it is, but also liberating. And though, really, I don't buy books as freely as a lot of people [I often download ebooks from Seattle Public Library], and though I've made a very concerted effort to give away books by the Rubbermaid tubful, the empty space fill up again. This getting rid of stuff is part of the "don't burden your kids with junk they don't want" process, too. Thanks for responding.
My bedroom book shelves, three of them built into the wardrobe, are exclusively reserved for unread books, and they are always stuffed full. When gaps appear on the shelves, it prompts a primal urge to peruse my wish lists at Wordery and Kennys and FNAC, and other booksellers which serve my region. Those undevoured books are the first thing I see in the morning and the last at night. Since they're filed upright rather than stacked on their sides like you, this gives me the opportunity to slide out two or three at a time, examine them, sample their opening pages, and them put them back as I spend time contemplating which one exactly suits my current needs and mood.
Coincidentally, Edith Grossman's translation of Don Quixote, in hardcover, is also a long-time resident of my unread shelf. But I've already read two other English translations in full, and the Rutherford translation is so satisfying that I may never get around to Grossman's perhaps too modern American style version. So I'll call this a never-to-read and open the space to something similarly fat from one of those wishlists, maybe Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet. But the longest-serving inmate of my unread shelves is Heliodorus's An Egyptian Romance, credited as the world's first romance novel. I will follow your instructions and work this Syrian Greek into the flow.
Great response, Larry. You're still on the other side of the world? I sense you have less room for the frivolous than I do. THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET is wonderful . . . but it takes some upfront forgiveness--have to forgive his fascination with the arcane, and with overwriting. But the writing is also lovely, and it evokes a time and place saturated with otherness, for me anyway. I bounced off it a few times before reading it straight through one dismal November. In the second book, Bathazar, Darly has left Alexandria for an island where he has taken his dead consort's young daughter, and he's visited by Balthazar who has read the ms. of Justine, and proceeds to tell him that he (Darly) didn't know the whole story, so that Balthazar is a re-interpretation of Justine. I think I'm going to have to pick The Wizard of the Crow for one of mine . . .
I now live in Portugal, a different side of the world than before. I should have thought twice: English books are 25 to 50 percent more expensive even than elsewhere in Europe, thanks to aggressive import duties. It remains to be seen how I survive. As for frivolous, I've been reading simple kids' books and comics in Portuguese to help me learn the language, so you;ll also find O Bando das Cavernas (The Cave-People Gang) on my Unread shelves. José Saramago it isn't!
Speaking of Saramago (sort of), have you read Antonio Lobo Antunes. Much harder, but very good. I've read THE NATURAL ORDER OF THINGS (1992) and ACT OF THE DAMNED (1985).
I read his THE LAND AT THE END OF THE WORLD, in English, which was overwhelming, with sentences two pages long which I forgot what they were about by the time I reached the end. I think such overwriting can be even more obtuse in translation. I'm saving reading any other Portuguese literature until my language ability enables me to read it in the original.
I’ve started weeding out the books I likely won’t read ever, but it’s a painful process!
Well, it is, but also liberating. And though, really, I don't buy books as freely as a lot of people [I often download ebooks from Seattle Public Library], and though I've made a very concerted effort to give away books by the Rubbermaid tubful, the empty space fill up again. This getting rid of stuff is part of the "don't burden your kids with junk they don't want" process, too. Thanks for responding.
My bedroom book shelves, three of them built into the wardrobe, are exclusively reserved for unread books, and they are always stuffed full. When gaps appear on the shelves, it prompts a primal urge to peruse my wish lists at Wordery and Kennys and FNAC, and other booksellers which serve my region. Those undevoured books are the first thing I see in the morning and the last at night. Since they're filed upright rather than stacked on their sides like you, this gives me the opportunity to slide out two or three at a time, examine them, sample their opening pages, and them put them back as I spend time contemplating which one exactly suits my current needs and mood.
Coincidentally, Edith Grossman's translation of Don Quixote, in hardcover, is also a long-time resident of my unread shelf. But I've already read two other English translations in full, and the Rutherford translation is so satisfying that I may never get around to Grossman's perhaps too modern American style version. So I'll call this a never-to-read and open the space to something similarly fat from one of those wishlists, maybe Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet. But the longest-serving inmate of my unread shelves is Heliodorus's An Egyptian Romance, credited as the world's first romance novel. I will follow your instructions and work this Syrian Greek into the flow.
Great response, Larry. You're still on the other side of the world? I sense you have less room for the frivolous than I do. THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET is wonderful . . . but it takes some upfront forgiveness--have to forgive his fascination with the arcane, and with overwriting. But the writing is also lovely, and it evokes a time and place saturated with otherness, for me anyway. I bounced off it a few times before reading it straight through one dismal November. In the second book, Bathazar, Darly has left Alexandria for an island where he has taken his dead consort's young daughter, and he's visited by Balthazar who has read the ms. of Justine, and proceeds to tell him that he (Darly) didn't know the whole story, so that Balthazar is a re-interpretation of Justine. I think I'm going to have to pick The Wizard of the Crow for one of mine . . .
I now live in Portugal, a different side of the world than before. I should have thought twice: English books are 25 to 50 percent more expensive even than elsewhere in Europe, thanks to aggressive import duties. It remains to be seen how I survive. As for frivolous, I've been reading simple kids' books and comics in Portuguese to help me learn the language, so you;ll also find O Bando das Cavernas (The Cave-People Gang) on my Unread shelves. José Saramago it isn't!
Speaking of Saramago (sort of), have you read Antonio Lobo Antunes. Much harder, but very good. I've read THE NATURAL ORDER OF THINGS (1992) and ACT OF THE DAMNED (1985).
I read his THE LAND AT THE END OF THE WORLD, in English, which was overwhelming, with sentences two pages long which I forgot what they were about by the time I reached the end. I think such overwriting can be even more obtuse in translation. I'm saving reading any other Portuguese literature until my language ability enables me to read it in the original.