Conquer

So much to read, and so little time for reading.

I am passionate about bookstores. I love these little places where all bits of knowledge gather. Something about the atmosphere breeds a new persona for me. They are tantalizing places, and they vary so widely.

Barnes and Noble gives off corporate-elite airs. Borders greets consumers with a slightly hippie front. Books-A-Million man-handles shoppers into a hug. Musky, dusty, little independent bookstores prime inquiring minds for a rainy afternoon's perusal. Each store broadens the possibilities for the future, but often so widely that I almost have a panic attack thinking of all the reading I have yet to do.

I'm young. I read voraciously in adolescence, but focused on contemporary (mostly vampire) fiction. My teenaged self adored Anne Rice, Anne Bishop, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Laurell K. Hamilton. Then I devoured John Grisham and David Baldacci. I morphed into love for Neil Gaiman, and Chuck Palahniuk. I still adore selected works by most of these authors.

I grew up a little. I started reading Austen, Swift, Capote, Edith Warton, but as class requirements. I skimmed over them in my procrastinating way. I wish to revisit them all. I read Oscar Wilde and Dorothy Parker for leisure, and swallowed Lewis Carroll and Ayn Rand right along with them.

Now, I yearn to discover more of the Greats (only a capital "G" will do). I want to consume everything. I have stacks of books not yet read. William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Toni Morrison, Thomas Hardy, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Victor Hugo, Dante Alighieri, Gabriel García Márquez, Vladimir Nabokov, Jorge Luis Borges, Franz Kafka, James Joyce. I want to read so many more. They are a marching military force, and I can only pick them off one by one. How does one conquer such a force?

How can I, with part-time employment, full-time student responsibilities, and a lively social life, enjoy them all?