Books, books, books...
Did I ever mention that I am a compulsive book-buyer? ☺ I have to struggle not to buy books, and one way I restrict myself is by keeping two lists: one list of books I have bought so far this year, and another list of unread books I have in my collection. The past two years I have bought fewer new books than during any two years in my memory (38 total). However, during these two years I have been sending my unwanted books to other readers through the Paperback Swap website, and receiving other used books in return. I hesitated to announce how many of those books I have gotten during this two year period: 34 so far, and I recently mailed out 3 other books, so that total should reach 37 before the end of the year.

That is not a particularly good total, since in addition to those 75 books, I have approximately another 350 unread books in my collection. Keep in mind that I have a total of about 2,000 books, so my unread portion is only 17%, still considerably higher than I would like. My reading pace since retirement has been approximately 40 books per year, which means it would take me 9 years to read all my unread books if I did not buy any additional books. If I keep buying almost 40 new and used books per year, then I might never read all the books in my collection. And wouldn’t that be a shame?

A brief postscript to Thursday’s rant: yesterday the Rutgers football team lost a must-win game by the score of 40-13. That makes their record this year 4-7. How is that for a team whose coaches earn between $3,200,000 and $3,900,000 per year? Rutgers University sure knows how to get the most bang for the taxpayer’s buck, don’t they?