Flip-Flopping

We renewed our summer pool passes a few weeks ago and, yesterday, more information came in the mail about pool opening dates, hours, etc. With the warm weather (finally!) starting, it won't be long before I'll be forced to pull out my swimsuit, sunscreen and flip-flops again.

But that wasn't the kind of flip-flopping I'd been obsessing about this morning. Rather, I have stacks of to-be-read books in my office (and, also, near my bed...and in piles in the family room...and under a corner coffee table in the downstairs play area...and, well, you get the idea :), and I don't know where to start. Which genre to delve into next. Which author to study. Where to devote my time, energy and attention in the face of such literary abundance.

So, I've been doing this annoying thing: I'll start reading something. Find I'm enjoying it. Make it through about a third of the book. Get distracted by some required research I need for a writing project...or by a novel recommendation from a friend...or by a review I'm scheduled to write. Flip my attention to this other thing, convinced it'll be temporary but, like a pinball, I end up ricocheting from one work of fiction or non-fiction to another and only end up finishing the original book after I've renewed it twice at the library and it's finally due or within hours of my promise to return it to its owner.

It's exhausting. And I don't want to read this way anymore.

But the second I pick up one book and vow to commit to it, my gaze collides with the glossy covers of another three, and I think: Oh, but I want to read those, too! And I'd planned to months ago...