I’m struggling to read.

I don’t know if it’s all the writing wearing out my eyes, or my brain sinking into a stupor, but after a morning writing in bed, all I want is some Disney + and my knitting.

I’m missing books. The house is filled with them so it’s not a lack of choice that prevents me, but somehow I can’t quite find something to pull me in.

Of course, I’m still buying books.

What? Shut up. 

My daughter reliably informed me that there are book worms, sat there reading away and then there are book dragons, hoarding books for their beauty, memories or personal significance. In my crone years, I am more dragon with each passing day so maybe I have a new calling.

There are precious books on my shelves, bought when money was tight, that would have little meaning to anyone else but hold within them a moment in time, a memory, a snapshot of life back then, ringing with greater significance than the words on the page. Some I will never read again, but it is hard to let them go.  

Every room in the house is full of books.  Even the stairs are laden with cookbooks that I somehow can’t seem to let off. At some point ‘I’m sure I’ll have to get rid of some books or leave them to my kids, which will hardly fill them with joy.

So, I have a plan.

I am going to read all my books.

I know I just said I don’t have the brain for reading but let’s just ignore that for a minute.

You know I love a plan, and I plan to read the first 50 pages of a book and if it doesn’t stick, if I don’t want to carry on, the book has to go.

Simple.

Except of course, it might be that in my current headspace that particular book just might not be the right fit and in six months I might love it, so for some at least, there will be a stay of execution.

And then there’s the books that I’ve read and loved, they should probably stay as I might read them again.

I recently re-read Jane Eyre. I first read it as a girl of 10 and was engrossed in Jane’s younger life, the horrible cousins, the unjust banishment and the darkly terrifying Lowood School. Rereading as an older teen and then as a young woman I was all about the romance.  Reading now as a Crone I was filled with outrage at the trauma, screaming at the book that St-John was a ‘fucking dick’, relieved when Jane sent him packing.

So, you see, it would be stupid to get rid of books that I’ve already read as in rereading them I might rediscover myself all over again.

And what if I get rid of a book and then a few months later need it. I’ll not remember that I threw it out and will spend at least 6 months wandering the shelves, my eyes snagging where it used to be. That is going to be really annoying. So, I should keep books that I think I’m going to need.

And obviously reference books should stay – though maybe I should shelve them together so I can at least find them and not buy the same book at least three times – see moving things from their place on the shelf could cost me more than keeping them.

There’s at least one book written in French – bough by mistake – that can go.

It’s 30 Days of Giving again, maybe I should give a book a day. But giving books is perilous, hard to judge who likes what, and hard to bear the ‘I didn’t expect someone like you to read that!’

Don’t judge, I love a rom-com as much as a Booker Winner.

So, I’m going to read them all my books or let them go.

Maybe?

Do you want to borrow a book?