Getting Real about My “Set Aside Temporarily” Shelf

Mid-November, and I’ve been thinking about how many of the books I currently have on the go I will be able to finish before the end of the year – not to mention whether I can squeeze in any more 2019 releases, or get a jump on early 2020 releases (ha!).

In the back of my mind, however, is some mild, self-induced anxiety. You see, the other year I started an exclusive Goodreads shelf (i.e., one that doesn’t fall into one of the three standard categories, “Read,” “Currently Reading” or “Want to Read”) called “Set Aside Temporarily,” on which I place a book I have put on hiatus for whatever reason, whether I’d read a handful of pages or 200. Maybe a few library holds came in that I needed to finish before a strict due date, or I took on a last-minute review assignment and needed to focus on that book instead.

Usually, though, it’s just a case of having started too many books at once. I’m addicted to finishing books, but also to starting them – often a fresh stack of four or five in one sitting, to add to my 10 or more already on the go. I always used to say that I read 10‒15 books at a time, but in the latter half of this year that has crept up to 20‒25. Sometimes I can manage it; other times it feels like too much, and a few books from the stack fall by the wayside and get stuck with that polite label of “set aside.” It doesn’t necessarily mean that I wasn’t enjoying them, just that they were less compelling than some other reads.

Some of my “set aside” reads, stacked up next to my reading armchair.

So as I contemplated this virtual shelf, which as of the 12th had 33 titles on it, I figured I have the following alternatives for each book: pick it back up immediately and finish it as soon as possible, ideally this year (especially if it’s a 2019 release, so it can be in the running for my Best Of lists); regretfully mark it as a DNF; put it back on the shelf, with or without a place marker, to read some other time; skim to the end if I wasn’t getting on with it particularly well yet want to know what happens; or keep it in limbo for now and maybe read it in 2020.

I told myself it was decision time on all of these. Here’s how it played out:

(* = 2019 release)

 

Currently reading:

• Let’s Hope for the Best by Carolina Setterwall*
• Savage Pilgrims: On the Road to Santa Fe by Henry Shukman

 

To resume soon:

• The Easternmost House by Juliet Blaxland* (as soon as my library hold comes in)
• Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner*
• The Spirit of Christmas: Stories, Poems, Essays by G.K. Chesterton
• The River Capture by Mary Costello*
• The Scar by Mary Cregan*
• The Envoy from Mirror City by Janet Frame
• Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country by Pam Houston*
• Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage by Madeleine L’Engle
• The Way through the Woods: Of Mushrooms and Mourning by Long Litt Woon*
• Kinds of Love by May Sarton
• All the Lives We Ever Lived: Seeking Solace in Virginia Woolf by Katharine Smyth*
• Dancing with Bees by Brigit Strawbridge Howard*
• A Three Dog Life by Abigail Thomas (a re-read)
• The Dearly Beloved by Cara Wall*

 

DNFed:

• The Manticore by Robertson Davies – A different perspective isn’t enough to keep me interested in a recounting of the events from Fifth Business.
• The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman (even though I’d read 250 pages of the danged thing) – Painstaking but worthy historical fiction.
• Then She Found Me by Elinor Lipman – The first 100 or so pages were pleasant reading during a beer festival, but I had no impetus to pick it up afterwards.
• A Door in the Earth by Amy Waldman* – The first 12% didn’t grab me. Never say never, but I don’t plan on picking it back up soon. Sad, as this was one of my most anticipated releases of the year.
• The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf – I really tried. It was the third Woolf novel I’d picked up (and put down) in quick succession this year. She’s just such hard work.

 

Returned to the shelf for another time:

• Ship Fever by Andrea Barrett
• Emerald City by Jennifer Egan
• The Liars’ Club by Mary Karr
• Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee
• Wait Till I Tell You by Candia McWilliam
• The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton
• Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle by Dervla Murphy
• A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies by John Murray
• Saint Maybe by Anne Tyler

 

To skim:

• The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom* – Although very well written, this is dense with family detail, more than I really need.

 

Still set aside:

• In the Springtime of the Year by Susan Hill – to finish off next spring!
• Bodies in Motion and at Rest: On Metaphor and Mortality by Thomas Lynch (a university library book) – It’s in discrete essays so can be picked up and put down at will.

 

Some general observations: Recently I’ve lacked staying power with short story collections. However, I find it’s not usually a problem to read a few stories (or essays) and then return to a collection some months later. Memoirs, travel books and quiet fiction can also withstand an interruption. If I’ve put aside a plotty or style-heavy novel, however, that’s a bad sign that I will probably end up DNFing it.

 

Do you have a physical or virtual shelf of books that are partly read and languishing? How have you tackled it in the past?