An In-Progress Problem

I was watching a video clip of Ken Schwaber talking about scrum software development, and he got into an interesting problem. (Well, interesting to some of us.) This is the "in-progress problem." It arises when you find that you have many tasks started, but few or none of them are being brought to a conclusion.

In my case, this applies to my reading habits. I tend to start a book because it seems interesting, or I've been thinking about something related to its subject, or just because it's handy or will soon be due at the library. But then I start another book, and another, and I sometimes find it hard to get back to the earlier book and finish it.

On the current reading list accompanying this blog you can see that I started The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, by Robert Asprey, back on St. Patrick's Day (March 17th, for you heathens in the audience). I started another book, The Vampire Archives, edited by Otto Penzler, on the same day. That in itself is probably a bad sign. Starting two books on the same day indicates that I was not of a very settled disposition. So far, I've read only through page 21 of the 580 pages in The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, or 3.62%.

I haven't done all that well in The Vampire Archives, either, as I am now at page 158, in a story called "Ligeia," by Edgar Allan Poe. That's about 15% of the 1034 pages in the book. But I do have the excuse the I received The Vampire Archives for Christmas 2009, along with a whole CARE package of books. The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte I bought in a small gift and bookstore in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, in 2003, so it's been cluttering up my bookshelves for nearly seven years.

What am I going to do about this situation? Well, if experience is any guide, someday, perhaps a rainy, gloomy day like today, unfit for other pursuits, I'll pick up Asprey's book and start reading it. At some point, I'll be so far into it, and it will have engaged my mind in such various ways, that the reading will acquire a momentum of its own. And then I'll finally finish the book.

The Reading Trap

When I started posting here, some months ago, one of my goals was to post reviews, review articles, and essays, based on my reading. I got as far as listing the books I read in May, 2007, and making some comments on them. Here it is, late May of 2008, and I'm a year behind in posting about my reading. I'm also close to a year behind in my periodical reading. I have been reading today in the July/August 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs. I have finished the July/August 2007 issue of The Atlantic, but I have only completed the June 2007 issue of Commentary. I'm even behind in the weekly magazines: yesterday I read the April 26, 2008, issue of The Economist, while today I got through the April 28 issues of Information Week and U. S. News & World Report.

Then there are the books, both mine and the Pikes Peak Library District's, which are piled up beside my bed and in the study, unread or partially read. I made good headway into the backlog I had accumulated before New Year's, but more books keep throwing themselves into my path. Old books and new books, fiction and non-fiction, collections and anthologies. And series!

I had the aim of getting rid of some of the books in my study, and I boxed some up and donated them to the library. But there were some others I decided I need to read before I disposed of them. I have a lot of books by Pierre Berton, a Canadian journalist and historian. I haven't lived in Canada in a long time, so I should be able to live without these books. But the two-volume set on the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway - The National Dream and The Last Spike come to over 1,000 pages.

I have The Last Enchantment by Mary Stewart, and I was going to read it and then give it away. But my wife read it first, and she not only liked it, she discovered it was the third volume in a four-book series. So now I've read The Crystal Cave, and I'll need to read The Hollow Hills, before I can even start on The Last Enchantment. This isn't getting me anywhere very quickly.

The long and short of it is, I don't have as much time to blog about books as I hoped to have, because I'm spending way too much of my time reading the books in the first place. I'll try to do better in future, but I make no promises.

All contributions on books and the experience of reading are welcome here.