i'm not a monogamous reader

Bonnie Walker
Jun 28, 2016
3 min read

Do any of y'all find yourself working through three or four different books at the same time? Sometimes you pick up one and you blow through it in a week. Others, you've been in the middle of for, ehem, a year? But you still have every intention of finishing it....right? You're just on a break. Teehee.

Well, that's me. Definitely me. There's always an unsightly pile of books in, under, and around my nightstand. It's been a struggle to keep them looking pretty, instead of appearing like the nest of some book-junkie who hasn't left her room in weeks.

When I was 13 I officially ran out of space on my bookshelves (yes, plural) in my room, so I started expanding to other storage areas. To this day, I still have 30 or so books lined up neatly underneath my nightstand at my parents' house. Should I ditch them? Yes. Will I? Maaayyybbe.

So in moving forward into independent adulting, I resolved to do better with my book keeping. (See what I did there? *wink*) Dusted around my apartment are two or three bookshelves hepling to hold my collection of volumes. But the most important ones - the ones I'm in the middle of reading? Those stay right next to my bed for breezy accessibility.

You can see my ever-essentials: Bible, journals (this one & this one), studies, devotionals, etc. filling the drawer and the shelf. Bread and Wine and Every Bitter Thing is Sweet as I hope you've heard from more than just me, are absolute musts. (And you already know I love Shauna's Savor from this post.) Everything else on that bottom shelf are my "aspirational reads" - the ones I truly intend and aspire to read, so I keep them close. I can however highly highly reccomend Rainbow Rowell's Attachments. I had heard great things about her as a writer, but most of her books were geared toward teens, which I'm trying to edge away from. But Attachments is about two 20 somethings' instant messages at their newspaper jobs in the late 90's and the tech guy who reads all of them as part of his job. Great read, even better characters. I keep that one close purely for sentimental value - I finished reading it in the hospital waiting room the day my first nephew was born. (squeal!)

Reality check, these four books are what's currently living in a pile in front of that pretty book arrangement on my lower shelf. These were recent grabs from the local library. My Dad is Mr. Library and he's starting to rub off on me. I get a fair chunk of my book recommendations off of other people's blogs and instagrams (see Shauna Neiquist and Erin Carroll) and these were some of the ones that fell into my lap recently.

I started Room but put it on pause because I don't know if I'm up for something so intense. Instead, I'm digging into After You. If you haven't read it's pre-quel Me Before You, stop reading my post right now and go get it. Library, Barnes & Noble, Kindle, your sister's closet, I don't care where you get it - just get it. You can thank me after you finish binge-reading it for the next three days. (Also, read it before you see the movie, if you can! I read it before all the movie hype, and my rule of thumb is always: book first, movie second.) Up next will be Big Little Lies which has gotten rave reviews, and then Something Blue to follow up my Christmas break read of Something Borrowed.