where books go to die

i have always loved reading. i don't have a discerning eye for books, i just devour them. i read way too fast and miss a lot, just following the plot. i want to know how it ends, what happens, who lives and who dies. i have a laundry list of favorites - everything from faulkner to mrs. piggle-wiggle; steinbeck to mcmurtry. i read Harry Potter. i read War and Peace. i love books.

recently i've noticed a trend. when there is a book that i am not ready for, or just can't seem to finish, it ends up on the floor next to my bed. at first it started with James Herriot's All Creatures Great and Small. it isn't because I couldn't get into it, it's because Dan and I were "reading it together." yeah, shut up. we read to each other. but with long work hours and multiple vacations, we can't seem to get in more than a chapter a week. so began the bedside stack.

next, i read a fantastic book about China called Wild Swans. so i bought the companion Mao. i read four chapters, and they were all great. but i was stalled. maybe by Harry Potter? not sure. but Mao has been keeping Herriot company since last winter.

after these two made their homes at the bedside, suddenly Fiasco (should I even bother now with the election?), Reading Lolita in Tehran (I should probably read Lolita before reading Reading Lolita), One Hundred Years of Solitude (I was supposed to have an online book club, but got sidetracked by pulp fiction), The Know-it All (I know everything already), and The Canterbury Tales (saw some performed and thought it would be a good idea to read the tales that we saw in the theatre) all ended up stacked in a little pile next to the bed.

now i'm reading essays by Freud and Jung for my next master's class. will i ever get to start again on the stack? do i want to? there is something about these books that makes me not want to read them at all. either they're not worth it or the bedside is where books go to die. maybe if i put them on the bookshelf again they will have a whole new appeal.