October

I have a reading list. Multiple, actually. They range in length from about five books to about 25, and can be found on my phone, my white board, any of my many notebooks, and on random post-its and scraps of paper in the bottom of any number of bags. It’s not the most organized system. It’s also always in flux. Titles move up and down on the list in order of how urgently I feel they need to be read, or based on what I’m in the mood for. Some remain halfway on the list, because I started them and am leaving them, unfinished, beside my bed or on my desk or in my backpack, indefinitely, because I do want to finish them – just not yet. Some books get taken off when I get 100 pages in and realize I hate it (see ya, Love in the Time of Cholera); others get added on recommendation from a friend (hello, Hillbilly Elegy). Library books get priority, especially if I know I won’t be able to renew them. Books I’ve borrowed get bumped up to the top, because I don’t like it when people borrow my books and don’t return them in a timely manner. But usually, the list (the current one, anyway) gets shorter.

But sometimes the whole thing just gets tossed to the wind.

In the month of October, I did not read a single book from any of my reading lists. I happened upon Reading Picture Books with Children when perusing the New Books shelves at the public library one day. I decided to check out When Women Were Birds after shelving it at work. I got Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl after the library website recommended it to me based on prior checkouts. And I ended up reading The Haunting of Hill House because that’s the book for book club this month, and sometimes I’m a good member and read the title of the month. (Although sometimes I am not).

I am not one who likes changes of plans or spontaneity. I don’t like being distracted from accomplishing my goals. Reading all of these books means I have books due at the library and books borrowed from a friend and poor The Voyage Out still sitting at 57% on my e-reader. But I can’t say I’m upset. Reading Picture Books with Children is a lovely resource I am overjoyed to have discovered. When Women Were Birds made me think. Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl showed me a pre-Portlandia Carrie Brownstein I had never realized. And I realized that I might actually like horror/thriller stories after reading Shirley Jackson’s Haunting of Hill House – and given that her “The Lottery” pretty much scarred me for life, this is a happy surprise.

So, sometimes happenstance reading works out. But you can count on me adding these titles to a list just to cross them off and feel like I accomplished something.