On How My Nightstand Gets Crowded In Two Easy Steps

I am currently moving through my overstocked nightstand.  I have noticed an overall trend about these specific books;  I am about half-way to almost finished with all of them.  How does this happen? I think I have figured that out.

After reading this I noticed it was not-ready-for-primetime.  So I edited it a bit.  It reads a bit better now. -ed.

I go to a book store.  Usually Barnes & Noble since I get good discounts there.  I buy a few new books.  Sometimes this purchasing of books is spurred on by a review I read or an interview I listened to.  That single purchase turns into a few more related purchases.  I rarely leave the store with only one book.  Going to a book store and only buying one book would be a waste of valuable browsing and exploring of the book shelves.  Other books must be discovered and given a good home.

When I bring my new books home I am eager to start the one I made the trip to the store for. I start reading it in bed before I go to sleep.  This means that the book I was currently reading is shuffled off to the side until I finish my new purchase.

But this rarely happens.  Since the new purchase is supplanted by an even newer purchase.  It amazes me that I can even finish one book.

So the past two nights I shifted from Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver to Quirkology by Richard Wiseman which I wrote about just the other day. When I completed Quirkology I picked up Four Laws That Drive the Universe by Peter Atkins. Before I put this particular book to the side  I was through to the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  Now I know why I put that particular book down though.  It is rather dense and needs really close reading to get the concepts that Atkins is writing about. If you think that the laws of Thermodynamics are easy to grasp then you definitely don’t know them  Or at best you have a superficially knowledge of them.  Atkins really gets to the heart of each one.  Almost to the detriment of the book.  But, so far, he is doing a fine job.

Since I wasn’t in the mood to pay that close attention to scientific concepts so I picked up The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World, which, for some reason, I put down in one of my new purchase binges.  I was about half-way through this book and  I should be able to finish it in the next few nights.  And this actually cycles me  back to Stephenson’s Quicksilver, which I will pick up again later on. How so?  Well Quicksilver focuses on the Royal Society and its formation and includes characters like Boyle, Hooke, Newton, Leibniz and a few references to Spinoza.  This also returns me to the unfinished book The Fellowship which, quite fortunately fits in well with Quicksilver.

After I finish The Courtier I have about four books remaining (not including Stephenson) on my nightstand.  Which seems more manageable.  Then the process starts all over again.  Well not really, since on my dresser I have a stack of books I purchased from Neil Clarke over at Clarkesworld Books - Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror which I am going to tackle since is includes some great weird fiction.