It turns out that a state of torpor is harder to maintain than I had imagined. I thought that a bit of semi-hibernation in January would be easy enough – squirrels seem to manage it without much problem, although how would anyone know? Maybe after a day or two those squirrels are thinking that they’ve had enough of lolling about and would much rather be leaping through the tree tops. I bet that’s what happens. Although, as someone commented last week, if these hyperactive squirrels are currently in a state of torpor, what must they be like when they’re fully awake?
I can relate to this. Doing nothing is surprisingly hard. Doing pointless things, however, is surprisingly easy. For example, I have been organising my books. Naturally, they are already in alphabetical order by author and sorted by genre (I know, I know), but now I’ve decided that I need to list all my unread books. My mission in life is to read all my books that are worth reading and get rid of the ones I think I should read, but never will. Life is short – do I really need to waste precious time trying to read Jack Kerouac’s On the Road? I know it’s heralded as a classic and I’ve tried, I really have, but I find it so dull that I can’t make it beyond the first 50 pages. So it’s decision time: read or donate.
Being me, I can’t just pick a book up at random, read a few pages and then decide whether to keep reading or put it in the charity pile. I do enjoy a bit of order and so I’ve developed a system. I am going through all the shelves and listing every book I haven’t read, then I’m going to arrange them all in a table in a Word document (no spreadsheets for me, too many extraneous numbers and letters, too messy). I haven’t quite decided on the final format, but I think I’ll assign an eagerness to read ranking system ranging from 1, very reluctant, to 5, can’t wait. I know exactly where John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress will be on this scale and also where Anne Tyler’s latest will be; it’s the ones that fall somewhere in between that will provide me with hours of pleasant deliberation.
I must go now, it’s time for me to listen to the piece of classical music recommended for today in Clemency Burton-Hill’s book Year of Wonder. I’ve found that it is possible, you just have to make torpor work for you.
Surely you should be donating the books you have read, and keep the ones you haven’t?! I take a photo of the ones I’ve read and given away, just in case I come accross them again and can’t remember if I have read them! 😂
Wow, that is what I call being organized!
No, I keep the ones I liked and either lend them to other people or just enjoy looking at them. You know what they say about books furnishing a room.
Gosh, what is the pandemic doing to us all?
It seems you were once a globe trotting traveller and now you’re an arranger of books!
(Yes, yes I know, you still go to far more places in the pandemic than I would risk)
But such a great arranger of books!
R, I suspect Sheridan was always an a arranger of books even managing to be a traveller too. I’m struggling to find too many books in your photo that I have read. I’m such a slow reader I know I will never be able to read all the books we have. I currently still need to make it out of Afghanistan into Pakistan with Dervla!
You know me too well! And I have yet to make it to Khiva with Christopher Aslan Alexander. If we did fewer jigsaws, me might read more books…