The Dreaded To-Be-Read "Pile"

Patrick, over at Pat's Fantasy Hotlist, has dared us all to reveal the contents of our to-be-read piles. While I don't have time enough to type in all of the titles, I can give you an overview, since -- inspired by him -- I've just measured my shelves.

My unread shelves total about eighty-seven and a half feet (a thousand and fifty inches). The books range in size from a quarter inch to two inches, so let's call it about three books per two inches for a rough average -- that gives me about fifteen hundred unread books. In recent years, I'm averaging reading about three hundred twenty books a year, of which roughly 62 percent (or one hundred ninety-eight books) were for myself (and not for work). At that rate, if I don't add any more books to the stack, I can finish up everything I already have in only about seven and a half years.)

Some of the things I have to read, choosing one book semi-randomly from each distinct area or pile, are:

• The Rainbow Fairy Book by Andrew Lang, illustrated by Michael Hague
• A History of Britain (three volumes) by Simon Schama
• The Plot by Will Eisner
• Ulysses by James Joyce
• He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope
• American Poetry (Library of America, probably edited by someone, in four very large volumes)
• The Letters of Evelyn Waugh edited by Mark Amory
• Collected Poems by Philip Larkin
• The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco
• The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
• Yaleen by Ian Watson
• White Time by Margo Lanagan

All of those books share two things in common: 1) I can read their titles, more or less, from where I'm sitting now, and 2) I'm not likely to get to any of them this year.