Book Guilt

I started this blog back in October, right before I got pregnant. I signed up with the name bookish because, well, I am. However, it seems that the second that pregnancy test came back positive, all my book-reading abilities flew right out the window.

These days, I can't concentrate on anything to save my life. I have hundreds and hundreds of books and probably 50 of them are books that are waiting to be read. Some I'll probably never get to (The Tao of Physics? Probably not gonna happen.) but some I really want to read (I'm looking at two PG Wodehouse books, Six Wives by David Starkey and Last Train To Paradise, all begging to be opened). And what am I reading? The Shell Seekers by Rosemund Pilcher. The fucking Shell Seekers. Which I have read, no lie, probably 15 times already. It's a nice book, very comfortable, like sinking into a feather bed, but still. What next? Re-read Little Women for the eleventy-third time? This is ridiculous.

I know that being pregnant makes me lose what little concentration I have. Plus, there's that whole annoying exhaustion thing. But I'm starting to get a little disappointed in myself. I have huge amounts of book guilt - does anyone else suffer from this or am I a total lunatic? Books that I haven't read yet, that just sit there on the shelf. I can hear them. They say, "Oh, that's right. Read that Maeve Binchy again. That Jennifer Weiner, like you haven't read her books enough times. We'll just sit here. Mouldering. Don't mind us." I tried separating them into different book cases, to shut them up, but it hasn't help. Now, instead of one big section of waiting-to-be-reads, they're scattered all over the house, waiting to snag my guilty conscience as I pass them over for that battered copy of Maia or the well-thumbed Autobiography Of Henry VIII. (Both are excellent, though. I highly recommend them.)

I don't want to start reading drivel. I like my books, even the ones I've read many times. They're like old friends. But I want to make new friends. I NEED to make new friends, so my mind doesn't turn into complete mush once the new baby gets here, as is highly likely. So what do I do? Stop reading so many blogs? But I like the blogs I read, I enjoy them, I get information or support or a laugh from them, and that's important, too. They do, it has to be said, severely cut into my reading time. Maybe I need to ration my blog-reading time. Only do it for an hour a day. But then how will I remember which ones I haven't read yet? There's that whole seive-for-a-brain problem again.

I just don't know. I do think I'll shut down the computer now, though, and go finish my book. Even if I have read it before.