read as many books as possible, starting with all the books I own but haven't read

So it’s the end of my semester abroad here in Rome. This means that I’m leaving for the US soon, which in turn means that the task of packing all my stuff back up into suitcases is impending. This implies that I should be purging the stuff I’ve accumulated, getting rid of things, seeing as how I have limited space and an even more limited capacity to physically deal with my luggage.

That would make sense. But am I sensible? Hardly. What do I do? I buy more stuff. What stuff do I buy? Books. Large, heavy books.

I couldn’t help myself. As my friends here in Rome have discovered, I have trouble forcing myself to pass any bookstore without taking a quick look around inside. This can get dangerous at times. So I was wandering around one of Rome’s open air markets yesterday morning checking out the fresh fruits and veggies and other tasty looking things when I spot a sign written in chalk on the side of one of the stands:
LIBRI==>
It’s like offering a small child an ice cream cone or offering a dog a steak or something. Books are magnetic and I’m made of iron. So I wander over to find shelves and tables full of books to browse through. At first I only see the tables full of random Italian books, but when I asked the shopkeeper he pointed out an entire shelf full of English books. Oh joy. I start browsing through them – new books, old books, fiction, nonfiction, a decent selection of just about every genre there is. I find a book about Iran – very new, just published last year – and check the price on the back. £12.99. I ask the guy how much he’s selling it for. €4, he says. €4 for a £12.99 book??? That’s like less than a third of the price!! Well I can’t very well pass THAT up, even if the book is a fat and gigantic paperback. I got that one and another (much smaller) book that originally cost €4.99 for €5 total. I couldn’t help it, I couldn’t pass up a bargain like that. Plus the shop [stall?] keeper was so nice and friendly and talked with me in Italian and spoke slowly so I could understand…I was doomed from the start.

Then today I bought another book from another bookstore. I wanted to get a book to read in Italian, so I went to the bookstore on the way home from school, the one that I’d stopped in a few months ago and had a great conversation with the shopkeepers, and bought one of Calvino’s books (The Nonexistant Knight) in Italian (Il cavaliere inesistente). I really had been planning on getting a book in Italian for a while. I’m half considering getting another one – I wanted to get Calvino’s Italian Folk Tales in Italian (figured it’d be easy to read) but apparently it’s currently being reprinted, but I’ve seen at a couple of the larger bookstores books of Italian short stories with the Italian on one page and the English translation on the opposite page – PERFECT! Then I still want to get the European edition of the Da Vinci Code in paperback…

I really shouldn’t. I really should stop myself. I need to remind myself that I am a very small girl with no upper body strength and I’m gonna need to fit all these books in my luggage and carry them back…no, I’ll be honest, that probably won’t stop me from buying more. I’ll just have to leave more clothes behind, that’s all.

I just played with my All Consuming list, so the list of books it says I’m reading are books that I’m actually in the middle of, in one way or another. The 50 or so other books that were on it are now on my “should read” list, where they should be. I’m gonna work on trimming that down…
I’m reading a whole lot this semester, mostly because classes here are an absolute joke compared to GW and I need to give my brain something to do. I’m working my way through the AUR library and getting to know a couple of the guys who work in the library (they’re seeing me on an almost daily basis).

It’s tiny, disorganized, a bit crowded, and overpriced, but it’s a real English bookstore stocked completely with English books, and they do give a 10% discount to students (although 10% off of overpriced is still overpriced). If I run out of interesting books in the school library I can hit this place up again.

Well, being abroad, I really couldn’t take that many of my own books with me, and I’ve already finished all but one of the books I brought. So now what I’m doing is I’m going through the school library and checking out books that they have that I’ve wanted to read for a while but haven’t gotten to quite yet. The library’s pretty small, but they have some fiction, a decent philosophy section, some political science, a decent selection of anthropology, and some religion books that look interesting. Might be enough to occupy me for a semester. After the initial weeks of nonstop tourism and sightseeing, life has settled down to something vaguely “normal”-esque here, and suddenly I have a whole lot of free time but I really don’t feel like being a tourist, so I’m reading a whole lot. I’m devouring books here. I’ve finished like four books in the past week or so (check out my allconsuming list, there’s been a bunch of books checked off in the past couple weeks). I’ve already read more books here than I’m able to in a normal semester at GW. I don’t know if that’s a good thing (that I’m reading so much more on my own than I normally do during the school year) or a bad thing (that I have all this time to read instead of being busy with schoolwork or an internship or, I dunno, I’m in Rome, sightseeing or something), but whatever, I like my books and I love walking up to one of the gorgeous parks around here and sitting and reading and peoplewatching and just enjoying the day.

I resolve to spend more time reading books unrelated to my classes.

At the bookstore the other day, my manager and I were comparing travel guides on Rome. One I was looking at listed various shops and things in Rome, including a couple of English bookstores. That might be dangerous.

I’ve been too busy with school to read lately, I haven’t read anything not connected with a class since I finished the Six Questions of Socrates…:-(

Hopefully Thanksgiving break will remedy that.

To everyone in the world of 43T…an open book discussion thread!

What’s your favorite book? Best book you’ve read recently? Book you recommend most often? Most informative book you’ve ever read? Book that, if everyone in the world read it, would make the world a better place? Books tied to happy memories? Books that make you happy? Books that inspire you? Anything about books!

I’ll be expecting some good responses by the morning :-)

I’m starting to use the 43 All Consuming site to keep track of my book list. It needed to be recorded anyways.

I’m open to suggested additions for my list :-)

Edit: My All Consuming list is all the books that I want to read, not just the ones I own and haven’t read yet.

Finished The Rule of Four. Starting Message in a Bottle by Nicholas Sparks (his books are one of my guilty pleasures).

I keep buying bunches more books! I buy books faster than I read them! I suppose that’s a side effect of working in a bookstore. But now that I’m back at school, I’ll be buying books much, much less often, and hopefully reading a bunch of them. Currently reading: The Rule of Four, which is like the Da Vinci Code’s more intellectual older brother. I really like it so far. I just finished Ishmael, after I read about it from some of Ake’s old entries. Excellent read, recommended to everyone, but especially anyone with any interest in environmental issues or anthropology.

Oh, by the way, if anybody wants to join the team on this one, just lemme know. Be glad to have you.