To Be Read

Problematique: Is the To Be Read pile a sign of failure on the part of a booklover, or, on the flipside, is it a badge of honor signifying inane bibliophilia and devotion to the physical book?

Any biblophile worth his or her salt has a To Be Read pile cluttering up the stacks. It starts small, commencing with the thick, ambitious Umberto Eco tome, picked up on a whim at Powerbooks. Then come the others: Sedaris, a Gaiman-edited anthology, an unfinished Murakami, the copy of Gone With the Wind bought for P80 in a bargain bin. The end result is an impossible, shameful collection of uncracked books: books which represent buyer's remorse, wasted money, and a little bit of guilt.

Is the To Be Read pile a sign of failure on a bookworm's part? We were all taught as kids to finish what we start, whether it was a coloring book page or a slice of pizza. As kids, bookworms are those anti-social tykes who read faster and better books than their classmates. If you hand him or her, say, Harriet the Spy during homeroom, chances are it'll be finished by lunchtime. As many Bookworms get older, though, the bad habit of impulse buys and literary promiscuity (read:continually shifting from one book to the other) tends to set in.

The To Be Read pile leaves me conflicted, as I am both a lover of reading books and also a lover of good ones. I've heard it said (and I believe in it, on some level) that to read bad books is a waste of one's time. Would it be sound to say that I simply do not finish books because they aren't any good? On some level, maybe. Perhaps it's the unpretentious, let's-not-be-English-majors side of me who simply sees the classics are overrated. I haven't finished critically acclaimed works such as The Great Gatsby, White Teeth (4 years and counting!), or Cannery Row. I can never really get past certain points in the book, no matter how long or short the book is. On the other hand (and this is where I hang my head), I've finished "lesser" books in a very short span of time. The first time I got my hands on Harry Potter 1, I finished it in one night. And I can breeze through a Gossip Girl novel in one day, maybe even two (ssshhhh!).

The To Be Read pile is sometimes about decadence, symbolizing the Bookworm's ability to buy books (how painfully nouveau-riche), as well as a mania for books. The first one is less prevalent, as it's only done by the immensely pretentious or the immensely wealthy. There's even a company in New York which will design a custom "bookshelf" for you, with the "right" books to suit your home and your personality--or the one you want to project. The second reason is less about saying, "Look how much money I have to burn!" and more about saying, "I love books so much I buy them in bulk and forget to read them!" The volume of books on your shelf, plus the idea of a plethora of unexplored possibilities, is thrilling, tantalizing even. It gives the facade of being well-read, or, in the case of the volume of unread books, your future intentions to be such.

As much as I'd love to rhapsodize on the symbolism of the To Be Read pile, we have to remember that at the end of the day, it is merely a pile of unopened books. Left unread, books are merely bits of inked paper stuck together with glue. The utility of a book is maximized when it is read and read to the end, and not when it sits idly on the shelf. After all, the book wasn't published to serve as a paperweight, or to match the wallpaper. Therefore, using the book for all purposes except reading could be classified as abuse and a disservice to the author.

As for my own reasons for my To Be Read pile, I'll concede that the main reasons behind mine are impulse buying, poorly evaluated choices, and some unwillingness to think. (I read and seriously analyze novels and poems in almost every class, is it too much to ask for some light reading once in a while?) While the idea of slogging through great books I've attempted over and over again is gruesome, sometimes you've got to trust the hegemons (The NYT Review of Books, my professors for example) and just go with it.

A bit of the To Be Read Pile:
Amsterdam (Ian McEwan)
The Outsider (Albert Camus)
Les Miserables (Victor Hugo)
White Teeth (Zadie Smith)
The Complete Works of Willa Cather
Living to Tell the Tale (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

There are about 20 more titles, but posting them all is breaking my heart. Oh, knowing yourself hurts so much.