When we moved out of Alaska three years ago a lot of our stuff was shipped out in a container by barge. There was a work slow down in Puget Sound back then and when we arrived in Seattle our container was floating around out there somewhere - along with hundreds of other ships. So we left it and kept going to Florida where the plan was to buy a house within a few months and start living.

Well.

It was hot (which I knew it was going to be - I grew up down there), and the husband was a bit overwhelmed by the East Coastness of it all (I have no idea what this means either but it was real to him), so we didn't buy a house and instead started talking about if we should buy a house and long story short, our family received the pallets out of the container and they sat in storage for two years while we worked the whole "where are we going to live" situation out. (And we are now in the Pacific Northwest - don't even ask me how much fun those two years were.)

All of my books were in storage, along with a lot of clothes, all the music and movies and baby blankets for my son (who never used them since he almost three when we got to the boxes) and all the kitchenware and pretty much everything else you need and thus end up buying and having two of. When we finally bought our new house on the west coast and got our boxes I sorted the books in Read and Unread piles. And it was shocking - and embarrassing - how many books I ended up with that I had never read. (This does not count the encyclopedias, dictionaries or edition of The Canterbury Tales that my father owned and I keep for sentimental reasons only.)

123 Books, all unread.

They covered every subject, from military history to sci fi to chicklit. The only thing they had in common was that I bought them (or they were gifts) with the intent of reading them. And after we hit Florida, since I had no books, I just kept buying. (I was depressed, we had no house, my stuff was in storage - what did you expect me to do? There were a lot of music purchases and a new surfboard as well. I'm just thankful I didn't have an excuse to buy a car!)

So I started this year, 2005, with the "Readalution" (thank you chicklit!) to get through the TBR pile before I went on any book buying sprees. I gave myself two years to get through the whole thing, and although I hoped to read them all the way through, I have no problem with trying the first 50 pages or so and then tossing one aside if it's not working. (This has happened about a half dozen times.) Some were tough but important reads - The Seven Pillars of Wisdom must easily have a million Arabic names in it - but I've found some real gems in there as well. (See my article on N.M. Kelby's Theater of the Stars over at Bookslut.)

I've plugged along, always reading at least 10 pages a night on the tough books (like Seven Pillars), but flying through the ones I loved. I also added thirteen purchased books to the list since the first of the year (Harry Potter, some Poppy Z. Brite, etc.) and I've kept reviewing. Most of the review books are YA, so they are a nice balance to the heavier stuff. And now, in October (almost) I have............(drum rolling here)......................

30 Books Left!!!!!!

Man, do I ever want to see the carpet under those books! I can't believe I've gotten this far (or that some of thse books were so bad and I bothered packing and moving them in the first place).

The most recent read was very good, The Taste of Dreams: An Obsession with Russia and Caviar by Vanora Bennett. This was a gift from my great uncle Ben and very interesting. I have read a bit about Russian history but much of the modern day to day living in the past thirty years has only been gleaned from the newspaper and magazines. Bennett was a journalist in Russia and followed several stories, but mostly that of caviar smuggling and the damage to the sturgeon in the wake of the Soviet Union break-up. The environmental mess is huge and it sounds like caviar is not long for this world. Honestly, I've never had any interest in eating fish eggs, but reading about the relationship between those who love it and the struggle to still harvest it was fascinating. Bennett is a great writer and clearly loves her subject. There's a healthy dose of Russian history in the book as well, all full of the quirks of the Russian royals and conquerers of the past.

One more title I can cross off my list and a good read to boot. Next up is Reading Lolita in Tehran - I didn't plan on jumping across the Caspian Sea, but there you go.

Check out Moorish Girl for photos of Laila's book in stores around the county and Christopher Bauman is guest hosting The Elegant Variation. Also, Paul Collins is interviewed at Identity Theory. Check them out and see what you might have been missing.