Nothing is certain except death and taxes—that, and the fact that there will always be more books on my “to read” list than I can finish in my lifetime, regardless of how long I get before that first certainty. (See the photo above for a very small portion of my list.)
I frequently lament the fact that I don’t have a Stack Overflow column ready for various holidays and commemorations. This month is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, and yesterday was Mother’s Day. Last week was Children’s Book Week. There’s part of me that wishes I’d always have a list of books ready for each occasion, but I’m generally just plowing through my piles somewhat haphazardly, and then I just see if I can smush a few of them together with a theme.
This past week I read this article on Tor.com: “You Don’t Need To Feel Guilty About Books You Haven’t Read Yet” and I found it pretty helpful. No matter how much I read, there are always going to be books I haven’t gotten to yet. There are going to be classics, “essential” reading for this or that reason, books by authors I love, books by authors I really ought to know, that I just haven’t read—and maybe never will. Not because I don’t want to, but simply because, well, there are more books than time. It’s the last section of the article, “surrender to the immensity to the world,” that really resonated with me. As Ferrett Steinmetz says, “This is an ocean, and in your finite lifetime you will only be able to swim across a bay or two.” So, here I am, enjoying the water, and hoping that I get to swim alongside some of you some of the time.
This week I don’t have a whole stack. I’m still reading The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz but I haven’t finished yet, so I’ll have more on that one later. I did pick up another Squirrel Girl collection, volume 11: Call Your Squirrelfriend, and finished that in a day (time travel shenanigans! plus a crossover with the War Between Realms event) and have realized there’s at least one other collection after it that I’ll have to look up.
So, this week that’s all I’ve got—and I’m trying not to feel guilty about it, and I’ll just enjoy the rest of this book I’m reading and tell you about it a little later.
Now, speaking of certainties … I should probably work on my taxes, too. I’ve taken advantage of the automatic later deadline this year, but even that is approaching soon…
