The Book Jar

Further to my last post, all about my love affair with books, I feel it's time for a confession.

Here goes...sometimes I have a really hard time deciding what book to read next. This is particularly true when I have just finished a really fucking amazing book and still have a bit of a hangover from it. There's no point in me attempting to read anything that is even vaguely similar as I'll constantly be comparing and thinking about the old characters and the old universe instead.

This can make it tricky to move on. Especially when I am not exactly err...short of choices, might be one way of putting it. (I am drowning in unread books may be another way of putting it).

So I stole borrowed an idea from Beth over at Plastic Rosaries and made myself a book jar. Well, the jar itself already existed, but it had only recently moved in with us, as it was one of the many things of Joy's that we inherited, and until just now it didn't have a purpose other than sitting in the fireplace.

First of all I tore up little pieces of paper and wrote down the names of every unread book in the house/on my kindle (yes, kindle books are being included too!) Just to give you an idea of the magnitude of this task, that part alone took me an entire evening. I have this belief that if something is worth doing, it's worth doing right. Which is all well and good but means that when listing books I haven't read before I wanted to be thorough and therefore had to go through three book cases, a fireplace and a kindle meticulously in order to make sure I had them all.

And here they all are

70 folded up pieces of paper ready to go in the jar. The breakdown in the end was 22 kindle books and 48 paperbacks. Non-fiction/textbooks have not been included because I tend to always have one of those on the go anyway alongside a novel. Although the fiction/non fiction divide would have caused difficulties when it came to autobiographies/memoirs, so since they are read for enjoyment, and not for information gathering, I decided to included them in the jar.

In addition there are also 23 other pieces of paper, identical but not photographed, as they are sequels, and as such are being kept separate!  I couldn't think of how else to work the whole trilogy/series aspect, without risking picking out book 3 before book 1 etc, so decided that once a book that is part of a series has been chosen and read, the next one in the series can be added to the jar. Although I have decided to allow myself the option to forego the jar and just immediately read the next book if I want to. Yes that might be cheating slightly but I know what I'm like with trilogies and I know that if the first book is any good I'll want to move straight on to the second and then the third and so on.

Otherwise the rule is going to be simply that each time I am looking for a new book to read, I reach in the jar (possibly give it a shake first) and read whatever title I pick out.

Honestly, the idea is actually making me a bit nervous but I'm hopeful it will prevent the fortnight of dithering I am currently experiencing when I want to start reading something new but can't quite work out what I fancy/what mood I'm in.

If anyone is interested in how I get on with this little reading project you can follow my progress here on the blog and I'll let you know how it's working out. Although in the interests of honesty I should warn you that I am currently a quarter of the way through Cassandra Clare's City of Fallen Angels, so am unlikely to be lucky dipping just yet!