Today I took an inventory of how many books I have that I haven’t read. Now most of us who tend to hoard books do so for several reasons: intention to fully read the book (someday), see the book as potential or necessary reference, collect that subject/author/press, received the tome as a gift or inheritance and want to keep it for sentimental reasons, or simply can’t help ourselves. These and other reasons are why I periodically have to add more bookcases, or at least find clever places to stack more books. Still, it’s an improvement, since my book habit used to be much worse than my current 700+ library would hint at.

During the 90s decade I dabbled in online bookselling, amassing over 8,000 books, many of which I had, I’ll admit, a strong personal desire to keep rather than sell. It’s a bad habit for a bookseller to fall in love with the inventory, the very product you’re trying to sell to make a living. But it happens, and booksellers have several “interesting” ways to deal with this. Some simply put the book aside and never seem to get around to listing that particular book, thus avoiding a potential sale and the trauma of book and booklover separation. Others merely put an astronomical price on the book, assuming no sane person would pay such a ridiculous price, thus ensuring that the beloved book would stay on the shelf forever. That was my usual modus operandi, and to this day I regret three specific volumes that I sold to a few, obviously insane persons. So much for that theory.

Since I left bookselling and sold down my inventory, keeping only personal books and a handful of books that, um, were never listed, I’ve returned to the world of book collector and reader. It hasn’t been an easy transition, for once you develop a booksellers eye, it’s hard to abandon those instincts and opportunities. For months and months I’d keep running into great buys and dilemmas: “I could put this up on eBay…what’s a few listed books there going to hurt?” But bookselling is a disease of addiction, and like its cousins, you can’t “just” do a little. In time I’ve lost most of that “eye” and again see books for the singular pleasure they are, for the armchair traveling they offer freely, and for the varied magic of so many good writers.

Being a logical and process-oriented person, I sat down to calculate how long it would take me to read through my unread volumes. I’d love to report that I arrived at an answer, but when I factored in future books I’d buy, well, the whole thing became rather desperate! Assuming my current reading average of about four books a month, and assuming I never bought another book (ha!), I calculated a draw even in about the 9th year. Ah, but never buy another book? Blasphemy! Actually, I buy more books per month than I read, thus I’m doomed to an impossible task within my lifetime, barring some change that allows me to read all day, ever day. It seems I’ve perfected a perpetual machine of sorts that exudes no energy, only the joy of reading and the opulence of choice when I’m stumped on what to read next.

My conclusion to this little experiment of how many books in how much time is not that I discovered the break-even point, nor that I shouldn’t buy any more books (well, maybe it does show I should cut back, but I’m choosing to ignore that particular finding). The real essence is that it’s not about trying to read all of them. It’s about slowing down and enjoying the journey. It’s about reading each book with an open mind and an eager ear for what that specific writer brings to the craft. It’s about the opportunity to expand my thinking and learn something new with every book. But it should never be about how many I can read in a week, a month, or a whatever. All that matters is what happens in those moments when I’m engaged in those magical words on the page and the images they paint. Enjoying that makes for a wonderful life of reading.