Avoidance

Its happened again. More books have just appeared inexplicably on my shelves. After considering the piles balanced on first set of shelves near the bedroom door (have run out of space to put the books in neat rows) I counted at least twenty new books - not including the ones from the library of which there are three - which I haven't opened yet. Moving onto the other two sets of shelving in the corner of the room I noticed there was a pile of poetry books which just appeared one day. I wonder if I'm buying so many books as some form of avoidance?

In fact today has been all about avoidance - avoiding filling in the thousands of forms I seem to have been sent by numerous people; avoiding being in the house too much due to family suddenly appearing out of thin air; avoiding writing article about writers in fiction; avoiding finishing Kafka on the Shore so I can avoid writing review of it ....

So to further avoid doing anything - in no particular order here's what I'll be reading in the coming weeks and I've got a couple of long trips to make so these should fill up the time spent on trains.

Pinkerton's Sister - Peter Rushforth (this was recommended on Book World)
We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver
Carry Me Down - M.J. Hyland (no idea what its about but Ali Smith likes it so that is good enough for me)
Beyond Black - Hillary Mantel
The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova
Flaubert's Parrot - Julian Barnes
Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami
Findings - Kathleen Jamie (I was about halfway through this at the beginning of the year but got side tracked which is bad because this is a very wonderful book)
A Good neighbor - John Burnside
Swithering - Robin Robertson
Arthur and George - Julian Barnes (because I think this copy belongs to somebody other than myself)
Granta 98 - really the books aren't satisfied with appearing on my shelves so they have to appear in the post box as well! And its got a short essay about climbing Mount Sinai by AL Kennedy.