The Unread Shelf

I love books.

If I had my way, I would own a house with several guest rooms, a massive great room to use for house concerts, and one entire room for the library.

I currently content myself with a bedroom with several musical instruments in it, and a living room with two large bookshelves.

Books have a way of sneaking onto my shelves without being read. Then I see them and their spines mock me. This week, having grown tired of being taunted, I took all of the unread books off of the shelves and gave them their own shelf. It looks like this:

A lot of these books are ones I started or did not finish. Several of them were gifts. A few were free little library finds that I cherish yet have not read. Several of them did not pass the Dark Chocolate Test.

The Dark Chocolate Test comes to us from The Elegance of the Hedgehog, a beautiful and brutal book by Muriel Barbery. The part that comes to mind most often is a little chapter in which Renée, the concierge who never stops reading, says that a book has to be able to pass the plum test before she decides to read it. If the first few paragraphs can overcome the taste of a ripe plum (or, in some cases, dark chocolate), then she reads it.

For me, the books that very often pass the Dark Chocolate Test are fiction. Books with interesting opening lines and well written prose currently intrigue me much more than the books with a foreward, an introduction, and a preface (and yes, non-fiction CAN have all three of those at the same time) So it will surprise no one that nearly all the books on the unread shelf are non-fiction.

And I plan to conquer them. Or be conquered. Really, war metaphors maybe are not the best when it comes to reading. How about this: I am developing my appreciation of non-fiction. We shall see what can grow from the Unread Shelf being read.

For my first Unread Shelf book, I chose The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. I chose it for a few reasons. First, someone gifted it to me several years ago when it first came out. At the time, I was doing a fellowship and had little to no time for reading outside of the weekly assignments. Second, the shelf was looking very stuffed, and it bothered me. Third, I felt like if I took one of the biggest ones out first, I would feel better.

(I imagine that the author of this book would have something to say about how I have allowed my sense of self and emotions to guide my reading choices over the years. Well, he might have a point.)

Regardless, I am excited to read this book. And since it didn’t pass the Dark Chocolate Test the first time around, I have invested in a quart of ice cream from my favorite local purveyor of sweet dairy goods. The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self shall be experienced via the Ice Cream Solution.

Here’s to reading and thinking and writing and making.