I'm coming off a long phase of reading junk. Fortunately the realization that I was getting tired of it came along with the realization that filling my brain with nothing but pot-boilers (books and TV) was taking a toll and making me feel very depressed. I need more to chew on than Ruth Rendell, Alias, and Law & Order! So I took myself in opposite directions by beginning George Eliot's Daniel Deronda, which has been sitting on my nightstand for months, and renting the extraordinarily fluffy film "50 First Dates". It was good to think about real characters; it was good to laugh out loud.

So Peculiar thinks that I read every book I buy. Ha! If I didn't have constant access to libraries, I might, but those plastic jackets and spine markings have a pull on me that exceeds even the lure of smooth new paperbacks or rough-edged secondhand hardcovers. Since I'm not at home right now, and most of our books are packed up in hopeful preparation for moving, I don't think I can put together a list of ten books I've bought and not read, but I can probably come up with a few.

I've probably owned Rebecca West's The Birds Fall Down longer than Peculiar has, but it's now in a stack to read instead of on the shelf! I don't know why I've procrastinated on it, since The Thinking Reed is one of my favorite books--maybe I should check it out from the library...

I've had Incidents in the Life of A Slave Girl, by Harriet Jacobs, only a year or so--I bought it as part of a buy-2-get-1-free Barnes & Noble deal, because it looked interesting.

This one may not count, since I have read bits of it, but I bought a copy of the Apocrypha my sophomore year of college. I intend to read it all, I really do! Just not today.

Annie Dillard's The Living has only been in my possession since the last library book sale (this spring?). I've only read her non-fiction, so it should be interesting; this may be next after Deronda.

That's all I can think of right now; maybe I'll update tomorrow from home.

P.S. Sherry from Semicolon warned me from bothering with Christopher Paolini's Eldest; she was right. I checked it out from the library, sat down and read about 2 chapters, and chucked it back in the return slot. Bor--ing!