I followed this link from The Rap Sheet today. It’s AbeBooks top ten reasons we don’t get to certain books. Here’s the summarized list:
1. It’s a book you feel like you should read (think An Inconvenient Truth or the memoirs of some political bigwig). Let’s see…some author biographies and journals fall into this category for me.
2. It’s part of a series, and you haven’t read the earlier ones yet. Absolutely, although lately I’m more likely to have read the first one but not make time for the next books in the series (Laurie King’s Mary Russell books, Erin Hart’s series, Suzanne Collins’s Catching Fire).
3. Everyone you know is recommending it. Come on. We are book bloggers. This affects us all!
4. It’s intimidatingly enormous. This isn’t a huge issue for me, although I admit every time I look at Don DeLillo’s Underworld on the shelf there, I am pretty sure it snickers at me.
5. It’s a classic. This used to bother me, but it doesn’t anymore. If I am going to pick up a classic, it will be because I have a real desire to read it.
6. Your reading stacks get wildly out of control. Ahem. What? I can’t hear you from behind this stack of books!
7. The siren call of the bargain bin. I used to be much more guilty of this one, but I am getting better. The library card has helped tremendously, but I admit to a few lapses with the Better World Books bargain bin last year.
8. The author wrote something else you like. I have had The Night Watch staring at me for months now. I’ll get to it…sometime.
9. It’s a textbook or assigned reading. Thankfully, this one is no longer an issue for me!
10. You have a friend or crush who works at the bookshop, or you have access to a lot of great books at your job. Also not an issue for me, but I will say…having a library card makes it difficult sometimes, because I can just put any book I like on hold from the cozy comfort of my own home whenever I feel like it, and the next thing I know I’ll have a notice to pick up 12 books that are available from my list. Doh!
What are your reasons for not getting to books?
The Evening Reader 
I understood number 4. I’m fairly sure Under The Dome went “hey, baby” at me in the supermarket this afternoon.
Thank God for libraries- I actually can’t wait to get back to the city to my awesome library system at school.
I think I’m like those terrible men (or women!) who just want what they can’t have, but only when it comes to books. I mean, I’ll take a huge stack of books from the library only to return home and suddenly want to read exactly ZERO of those books. Not terrible because I can just return them and it’s not cost to me, but it happens with books I buy too. I buy some books, but then feel I need to read something I’ve owned for longer, or I read a great post about something and all of a sudden I want to read the one book I don’t own. It’s the only one that will do. It’s a sickness, I’m telling you!
Here’s something that didn’t make the list: the nefarious Blu-ray player. Why? Because it also streams netflix. I get sucked into spontaneous The Office marathons.
Literary Omnivore, those tomes can be cruel with their taunting, can’t they?
Steph, I know exactly what you mean! I have gotten better about getting through the library books (mainly because I cut back), but I am really bad about stuff I buy. If I have a new stack from the library, though, then I almost certainly feel compelled to read one of my own books, and vice versa. Oh, it’s infuriating!
Sherry, that’s why we have resisted the Blu-Ray player or media center of every sort. I am bad enough about watching Netflix streaming on my computer…or even just the discs from the mail. The series are the worst, because I can’t watch just one episode and then go read. No. *shakes head* Right now, it’s The Wire, and I am only on season two!
Oo, I so feel this. Especially the thing of everybody recommending it, especially if I don’t really think it sounds that great. Then the book can just sit and sit in my apartment for ages until it falls due at the library. (:
Jenny, recommended books that I feel I should read for the blog’s sake are something I can waste good library time on…I’ll bring home a stack and they just sit there. *sigh* I am giving that up this year!
Oh those are great. I think #3 particularly affects me. I love book recommendations but if one book starts to show up everywhere I sort of put it off for a while. Don’t want to end up not liking it because my expectations were so high.
That’s a great list! Although I’m irrationally attracted to enormous books, so that one doesn’t apply except to some nonfiction.
Whoops! I also meant to say, and I love classics. But if you replaced classics with ‘It’s written by a modern American literary authors’ that would apply completely. Authors like Philip Roth and Don Delillo worry me tremendously, even though I’ve never actually read them. 😉
Iliana, I also try to let hype blow over where books are concerned. Sometimes I am glad I did, and other times I kick myself for not having read something sooner.
Eva, it all depends on the book and the frame of mind for me as well. With DeLillo and Roth, certainly some of their titles are more accessible than others–I would definitely not recommend, for example, that you read American Pastoral as your first Roth. As good as it is, I think it might just make things worse. 🙂