Booklist

I read the book If On A Winter's Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino about six or seven years ago but there's this one passage in the first chapter that has always stuck with me and I was recently reminded of it by this quote in Crissy's tumblog.



The passage describes a jaunt through a bookstore and lists different categories of books that somehow ring very true (at least to me). I've been meaning to revisit this for a while and, well, here we are:

• Books You Haven't Read
• Books You Needn't Read
• Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading
• Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written
• Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered
• Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First
• Books Too Expensive Now And You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered
• Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback
• Books You Can Borrow From Somebody
• Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too
• Books You've Been Planning Top Read For Ages
• Books You've Been Hunting For Years Without Success
• Books Dealing With Something You're Working On At The Moment
• Books You Want To Own So They'll Be Handy Just In Case
• Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer
• Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves
• Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified
• Books Read Long Ago Which It's Now Time To Reread
• Books You've Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It's Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them
• New Books Whose Author Or Subject Appeals To You
• New Books by Authors Or On Subjects Not New (for you or in general)
• New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Completely Unknown (at least to you)