On Books: It’s Time to Revisit the Ol’ TBR List of the Month (November Edition)

Hi, there, Dear Reader. It’s early afternoon here in my corner of west-central Florida on Saturday, November 6, 2021. It’s a cold day – by Florida standards, anyway – but at least it’s not raining today. Currently, the temperature is 61˚F (16˚C) under cloudy skies. With the wind blowing from the northwest at 12 MPH (18 KM/H) and humidity at 88%, the feels-like temperature is 60˚F (16˚C). Today’s forecast calls for mostly sunny skies. The high will be 65˚F (18˚C). Tonight, skies will be clear. The low will be 51˚F (10˚C).

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If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that I love to read. I’ve been reading for as long as I can remember, even though lately I have a hard time carving time to read on a regular basis. So although I’ve bought some new books in 2021 – the latest being the third edition of DK Books’ Star Wars Year by Year: A Visual History, which was published earlier this week and I preordered in April – I have only finished one or two of them.

As you can imagine, my To Be Read (TBR) pile for November 2021 is…substantial, to say the least. I still have not made a dent on October’s list, plus I added one new title – the aforementioned new edition of Star Wars Year by Year – because I’m obviously reading stuff in miserly dribs and drabs. I’ll start reading, say, The Odyssey of Star Wars, get to a certain point in the narrative, then pick another book from the stack and read a few pages here and there.

The last book that I can honestly say I’ve read from cover to cover is Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker’s I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year. The events of Trump’s last 12 months as President are so strange, so infuriating that it was like watching a car accident scene – I don’t want to look, but I can’t help but scrutinize the proceedings. And because the authors’ previous Trump book – A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America – was written in that same no-wasted-word style I learned in journalism classes eons ago, I almost read that book cover to cover as well.

Aside from that, my TBR list for November looks a heck of a lot like the one I had last month.

As of November 6, 2021, this is what my reading list looks like:

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1. Star Wars Year by Year: A Visual History
2. The Odyssey of Star Wars: An Epic Poem
3. And the Last Trump Shall Sound: A Future History of America
4. The Great War: A Combat History of the First World War

As you can see, I still have not finished three of the books from previous TBR lists, plus I added the new edition of Star Wars Year by Year.

I don’t know why I’m having such a hard time reading for pleasure this year. Maybe it’s the sameness of my routine; since the pandemic started in early 2020, I have not done anything exciting, either in the house or outside it. I don’t have a relationship anymore, so that, too, is a huge contributing factor. And my room is not ideal for reading; the futon that I have here is not comfortable enough to sit and read on for long spells. And the lighting….ugh. The people I live with are not readers, so none of the rooms here are laid out with comfy reading chairs or lit properly for a good reading environment.

Still, I get at least 10 new books a year, cos that’s the way I am wired. I love the feeling I get when I get a new title from Amazon – more so, in fact, than when I get a new 2K or 4K Blu-ray for my movie collection.