And time passes...

So it's been two months this time since I posted. Whoops. I have the best of intentions and then it all just slips by the wayside, even after I lost the good excuses of finals, marriage and honeymoon. Ah well, it's been a somewhat busy summer.

I keep trying to pretend that I'm going to read ahead for fall, and while I may manage it yet, right now my focus is mostly on reading all those books for pleasure that I didn't get to read over the school year. As my Good Reads account shows, I've been plowing through a lot of books lately, and enjoying most of them. There's just something about summer that makes me want to read, and I've been happily obliging my craving. Lately it's been murder mysteries and young adult fiction, all of which are light enough reading to make me race through them.

I have been getting rid of a lot of books, though. I think the realization that Shannon and I will be moving every few years to a new parish has woken me to the fact that I really need to pare down my books to the essentials that I simply can't get rid of. The rest of them are being taken to Half-Price Books for a paltry profit. But at least it's something. At first it felt strange, to sell my books and not have them sitting on my shelves, but I picked books that I wouldn't miss, and sure enough, I don't even notice they're gone. I'm not only selling books that I don't want anymore, but also selling off some after I read them. Since I'm trying to work my way through all the books on my shelves that I haven't read, I've decided that if I don't love them and won't want to read them again and again, then I'm not going to keep them. I just don't have the time or energy to keep moving these books from place to place when I don't like them, or if I'm never going to bother to crack them open again.

Before anyone panics, though, let me assure you that there are still lots of books that I love and am holding onto, much to Shannon's wry dismay. But maybe I'll be ruthless enough that when we leave Kentucky after we graduate, I'll only have a few hundred books left to move...