The to-read pile

I have a lot of books. To anyone who knows me or has read a few posts on this blog, this cannot come as a surprise. All those books live in bookcases spread throughout my house. The bulk of my fiction lives in the living room, ordered in an ever-changing system but currently somewhat logically organised alphabetically by author's name (with a clear distinction between English and Dutch fiction, of course). In between all of these books are also some books I haven't read. I couldn't tell you how many exactly, but more than 10 and less than 50. For a while, I kept all my to-read books in between the other books, because it wasn't their fault I hadn't come around to reading them yet, so they should be allowed to live with the others. However, this led to frequent cases of 'having nothing to read' and therefore 'buying more books just to have something to read'. The bookish brain is easy to trick into buying more books.
To prevent a complete overload of non-read books, I introduced a 'to-read pile'. This is a stack of books on one of the shelves, consisting of books I haven't read or am in the middle of reading but have put aside for some reason. Although, to be fair, it doesn't contain all the books I haven't read yet, for then the pile would quickly fill up with giant tomes such as War and Peace, The Count of Monte Christo, Parade's End and The Fountainhead. Also, it doesn't contain all the books I am in the middle of reading, because I always keep a stack of those on my bedside table; books I got tired of while reading in bed which never made it back down to the living room again. So its a bit of an arbitrary pile, but let's be honest, we're talking about a book sorting system; it's not going to bring us world peace.
November is usually a month where the to-read pile is pretty big, due to a couple of reasons:
- my birthday is in October
- the shorter the days, the bigger my urge to buy books
- I generally don't read a lot during NaNo, and what I read tends to be a reread
So for a sneak preview of the upcoming months, I will now share my current to-read pile with the world:

To read, 19th November 2018

As you can see, no new books will fit on this pile at the moment. This is a good sign for me to actually start reading something that is on it.
But what is on it? Two books I'm in the middle of; Stephen Fry's Mythos and Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill. The former I couldn't really get through, the latter is a train book (a thin, light book that I've already read, which I can slip into a bag whenever I need distraction on the train). Then there are books I got for my birthday; The Catcher in the Rye, The Most Dangerous Place on Earth, Calypso, We zullen niet te pletter slaan and Een schitterend gebrek. A nice blend of classics and wholly unknown novels and authors. Are you experienced? was also a gift, although not for my birthday. Milkman is the 2018 Man Booker winner, so an obvious buy. Normal People was a novel I found out about the day after my birthday, and I couldn't actually live without for another second. The other two, Little Fires Everywhere and Het bestverkochte boek ooit*, are my only guilt buys: books bought while standing in the bookshop for no proper reason, when I really have to buy something although there is no rationale behind it. I usually have more guilt buys in spring, in autumn I can somehow control myself as my birthday and the holidays are coming up.
So, there we are. 10 brand new books, 1 partly read, 1 a reread. If I were to give you an estimate that the next book I will read will come from this pile (I just finished rereading a Jasper Fforde book this morning), I'd say the odds are 50/50. Because despite the to-read pile, I can still pick up a completely different book. It's controlled chaos, as is all of literature.