Books on books

My New Year's resolution for 2024 was to get rid of something every day, and I've been able to keep it up. Books are one of the things that I can get rid of.

However, my job with Utah Historical Quarterly means that more books come into my house than go out.

Various publishers and authors send us books that they want us to review. As book review editor, it's my job to find reviewers for them. (It definitely has been out of my comfort zone to send so many unsolicited emails, but it's been a good experience.) But not all of the books are worthy of a full review. When that is the case, we usually publish a book notice instead, a paragraph that merely describes the book without analyzing its strengths and weaknesses. And it's my job to write the notices. So I have a large collection of books for which I have written notices, and many that I still have to write about.

I wrote all seven book notices for the latest issue of UHQ

On top of that, this year I'm on the book awards committee, so this week I brought home a stack of books that I will have to look at to see if they're worthy of awards. (I'm not going to read all of them word for word, just enough to know whether they're worthy of consideration.)

And then there's all the books I already have. I accumulated many books in grad school, and I had a colleague recommend to me that I keep them. I can't keep that advice totally, but there are many important books that I think I need to hold on to, because I might need to reference them in my work at some point.

I have a shelf devoted to books that I've worked on. 

I have a shelf devoted to books about holidays.

And I like buying books when I visit bookstores: "I've heard about this book! I would love to read it!"

I still have several books that I really want to read and intend to read. I'm really enjoying Benjamin Park's American Zion. I plan to read Charlie Brown's America by Blake Scott Ball, Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon by Cindy Ott, Chosen Path: A Memoir by D. Michael Quinn, and America's Public Holidays, 1865–1920 by Ellen M. Litwicki. Sometime.

But here's the thing: I don't do much recreational reading. Since I read for a living, there are so many other ways I want to spend my time.

And when I do read, I read almost exclusively nonfiction. I don't think I've read a novel since 2015. I prefer nonfiction, but it's not exactly the kind of material that calls out to me to read it. I read it more for learning and a sense of accomplishment than I do for entertainment. I liked the Harry Potter books, but even then I was in no hurry to read the sixth and seventh books when they came out.

I'm not the most organized person (I'm trying to do better), so I have various stacks of books throughout my room. I have downsized some this year and took books to the Book Garden in Bountiful. And I still have other books that I plan to get rid of. But it's hard when I actually have valid reasons to have and keep my various books.