Want to Read and WILL Read: There’s a Difference
It’s been brought home to me recently that what I post online as “Want to Read” (especially in my GoodReads account) isn’t necessarily the same as “will read” (or even Bookish’s To Be Read list). Let me expound.
My family and I recently decided to have our 98-year-old house completely rewired, from second floor (which I’m sharing with my brother, my new sister-in-law, and their two home offices) to basement (where our library, started by my father, resides, along with an extra room for books and storage). This, of course, means A LOT of furniture moving. In our case, that also involves moving enough books to move bookcases away from the walls so the electricians have room to work.
I discovered I not only had more than two dozen books to give away (I had originally intended to resell them, but there was simply no time), but more than three dozen more, for which I had no room, and were still in their travel bags on whatever piece of floor they had been put. I was mortified, really. What had I been thinking? It was bad enough I WANTED to read them, but to discover that I just wouldn’t have TIME to read them and the other books I had on my shelves was worse! (Intent is all well and good, but action is always better.)
As a result, I wound up donating the two dozen, and going through the rest with my father and brother, seeing which books they would keep in the library, which Brother will read himself, and which would join my contributions to the latest charity truck making the rounds. To paraphrase Tony Stark, I started out with a pure intention, then the mistakes and compromises came knocking. My reading backlog has become my own, minor demon.
And here’s the kicker: less than half of them are on my Want to Read list on GoodReads.
Quite a lot of my Read list didn’t originate on my Want to Read list. Many of them just wound up on my shelves or in my hands, either through family members (like the latest “In Death” mystery by J.D. Robb) or the public library (as is the case with Summer Hours at the Robbers Library by Sue Halpern). My Want to Read list (currently at 80+), on the other hand, is mostly populated by titles I’ve discovered online (through either GoodReads, Bookish, or even fanfiction.net!), most of which sounded interesting. I would click “Want to Read” so I wouldn’t have to remember the title, then look for it when I had the time, inclination, and money to get and read it.
But here’s the ugly truth, which I’ve mentioned before: I have too much that I want to read, online and off, that I have time for. People keep saying they’ll make the time to read more, but they almost never do. I never wanted to be one of those people, but I seemed to have turned into one without even noticing. The sad thing is, I read more online stuff, especially when I’m at work. (Fan fiction is not nearly as engrossing as a real book for me, and it allows me to pause to pay attention to clients.) I’m almost not ashamed to admit to being an online gamer of sorts. I have an account on WorldWinner.com, and I have two active farms on Farmville, which have their own, special suck on my time.
Here’s hoping the upcoming year has me reading down my backlog, and not just my Want to Read list.
Thank you for reading my ramblings, ladies and gentle-geeks, and I hope to hear from you. If you’d like to recommend a book for me to read and review, or even need me as an editor for your own work, please leave a comment or contact me on my Facebook page, for Just Write! Ink.
In the meantime, keep reading, keep writing, and never give up making your own magic. Be well, my dears.