A Reading Confession

And so it happened... again. I finished reading a book that had been on my DNF (Did Not Finish) shelf...in all truth and honesty... for years I think!

This is a humble confession nonetheless. It's not easy to ignore stigmas I’ve picked up on over the years, salty about readers like me who take years... often decades after publication to get around to reading, and finishing a book. And even so, in my defense, confession #2; this is the sole reason I’m reluctant to part with my DNF shelf.

Despite all the books I own, the beauty of this DNF shelf are ALL the times when I cannot find one book on my (coveted to-read) shelf that suits my mood. Either they are too long, or too light, or too something or the other (usually emanating from that first page) that is not ‘just right’.

That’s when I’ll amble over to my DNF shelf, wondering and wondering of all the books on this shelf, which one... Is The One?

Once I plucked ‘Just Waiting for the Bell!’ by David Wehmeyer off the shelf. How in the devil I overlooked the pure calming and humorous factor in that book eludes me to this day. That book ended up being one of my top 10 books read that year.

Sister Souljah’s, ‘No Disrespect’ yielded a similar experience. This time, refusing to give up on the story I opened the book to something like page 122, to end up scrambling back to page one to find out what happened that led up to what was on page... let’s say... 122.

The same thing (sort of) happened with Lord Vishnu’s Love Handles, A Spy Novel (Sort Of) by Will Clarke. It took sinking down to an all time low to fish out this puppy, picking up the story, a chapter or so past the point where I dropped the book, to saddle up with the character who I suddenly related to, realizing this man was in a wicked fight battling insanity... and losing badly I must lop on. HE-LARRY-OUS! Straightened my mood right out, and of course made my top 10 list that year.

And imagine this. A book falling ‘out of’ a shelf, landing on my foot, picking it up, opening it, getting annoyed, yet unable to part with it, and ending up loving it...yup... just like the others. That was Erma Bombeck's 'At Wit's End'.

These duplicitous instances have happened one time far too many in my estimation, to ever consider snubbing my DNF shelf.

Those confessions out of the way and onto the third confession... AGAIN, in all truth and honesty I plucked Taulbert’s book (thoughts here) off my DNF shelf because...YES... it was short... and YES... it was easy on the spirit... and YES... because it was a guaranteed read to get me that much closer to meeting my 2017 reading challenge on Goodreads.