Here we are well into July already, the year over half done, and I look at my reading table and shake my head. My goal this year was to read all the books on my groaning table, the books that have been there for months and a few for a couple *gulp* years. How hard could such a thing be? I see the books every gosh darn day since the table is next to my reading spot. Have I read a single book on the table?

Nope.

Not. A. Single. One.

I could fudge it and say all the books I have read have been on the table. You know, when I bring home books from the library I put them on the table. Then I read them. But that is cheating since I did not intend new books to be included in reading what is on the table. I still have half the year left, right? I could do it yet!

Let’s be realistic. If I read two or three books from the table by the end of the year that would be a success. If only the library would stop sending me emails telling me to come and get some books. It is all their fault! Sure I request the books, but if they weren’t so good about giving them to me I’d have to resort to reading the books on my table.

Currently I have the third volume of Saga waiting for me. Volume two was most excellent though the naked giant in all his glory was a bit surprising and, like the explicit robot sex in volume one, made me really glad I was not reading in public where someone might look over my shoulder.

I am about halfway through Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend. it is a good book and brings back memories of when I was in grade school and my best friend and I were the smartest in the class and always competing against each other. It wasn’t quite like in Ferrante’s book though, thank goodness.

Another book on the go is Susan Faludi’s newest, In the Darkroom. It’s a biography/memoir about her father and his coming out as transgender after 20+ years of estrangement. He was a not a nice guy when Faludi was a kid and now she is trying to come to terms with the past and who her father has become. It’s good stuff.

Also on the go is Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust: A History of Walking. Oddly, instead of making me want to go for a walk, it makes me want to ride my bike.

I feel like I have been reading a lot of nonfiction lately and it is putting me in the mood for a big fat novel. It may end up being another Kim Stanley Robinson or perhaps The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. One or the other will land in my lap in a week or so and neither of them are on my reading table.

Poor table.