Squirrel!

It's been ages since I read a book. 

It's not for lack of them, that's for certain. In fact I am surrounded with them. 

And that may be the problem.

My over-booked state is due to a perfect-storm convergence of factors: the removal of limits from the number of items you can take out of the library (I now have 40); the greater production and accessibility of audiobooks; and the advent of e-books. 

For a long time I put off buying an e-reader but finally, consumed with e-lust, I bought a Kobo. With which I am thrilled.

But now my situation is dire. 

I have the aforementioned 40 books from the library scattered all over the house. There are also two piles of audiobooks on CD in the kitchen and car, and e-audiobooks waiting to be listened to on my mp3 player. Meanwhile the e-books I downloaded from the library are ticking away like time bombs on my Kobo. 

(The library downloads on Kobo do not offer the print book option of choosing to keep them out past their bedtime and paying the resulting fine. No, when they expire they give no warning, they just -- poof! -- vanish into the ether. No matter what exciting thing was happening when you last put them down, they have left the building.)

There are now so many books waiting to be read, listened to, e-read and whatever that I am completely paralyzed. 

I have never read less in my life.

Occasionally I manage to finish a book, usually while concurrently reading several others. I read a chapter of one, put it down, then read or listen to a chapter of another, and another ... it's weird. 

One book I was getting through in this way was Howard's End is on the Landing. I felt an immediate kinship with the author: I too have many books on my shelves that I have never read! Unfortunately, unlike Susan Hill I don't want to read any of them, much less spend a year doing it. I just want them to stand around offering mute security, like Shakespearian characters with armour and no lines.

But still, I loved the book and was reading happily along when I was stopped in my tracks by her opinions about Alice Munro and Mavis Gallant:

The trouble with Munro and Gallant is a sameness about all their stories. They blur together. I cannot distinguish between any of their characters because they are so alike, live the same ordinary lives in the same ordinary places. 

Fair enough. But then --

With Munro, the problem is Canada. I have a problem with Canadian as I do with Australian writers. (I know, I know.)

It may be my rampant chauvinism talking, but I find something unlikeable in this, particularly in that final note of trilling debutantism: "Yes! I am so prejudiced, isn't it awful? Am I not adorable to say so?"

Have I missed something? Is it acceptable again, this trotting out of horrible ancient prejudices as though they were new and amusing? I blame Russell Peters.

Well, okay. I got over myself. But then later on Hill gets virulent about people who use bookplates, of all things. It's one of the less appealing things about bookish people that they can fasten on some tiny idiosyncracy and give it the Darfur treatment. Meanwhile, she is indulgent about people who write in the margins of books. People like her! Am I not ... etc.

So it was a shame, but it stopped me reading the book and eventually the library wanted it back. I have to say that I too am unable to keep Alice Munro stories apart, and the problem is even greater with the novels of Anita Brookner, which have formed a great congealed blob in my mind. (Oh I know! I know.)  

They are both exquisite writers but I am afraid that as a reader, as in so much else, I am a bit of a blunt instrument and frequently unable to appreciate nuance in the long run. It's fine when it first catches my eye but pretty soon my monkey mind is looking to jump to the next branch. Or, as it was so elegantly described in the movie Up: "SQUIRREL!"

All this is by way of saying that I am already worrying about the diffuse nature of my attention with regard to accordion lessons, which start up again tomorrow. Typically I bring to my accordion practice the same problems with meandering interest and easy distraction by bright and shiny things. The result is whole semesters given over to accordion ADD.

But not to worry, this year I have a plan ....