I have a huge stack of books to read. Many stacks; shelves, cases, boxes. Probably many more than I can read in my remaining lifetime.
Books leap up and attach themselves to me by magnetic force. My interests are wide and varied in fiction and nonfiction. I rarely take an interest in recommendations because I usually do better on my own. A stroll into Barnes & Noble for a specific purchase turns into five impulses. I can walk into an independent store like Moe’s in Berkeley and want one of everything. A search at Amazon.com leads to a maze of digressions. Click, click, click.
As for what I read next, it’s usually something that complements or counterbalances whatever I’ve just finished: after a heavy, deep, massive novel, a lightweight detective story; after a diverting history of jigsaw puzzles, a book of Zen teachings; after an analysis of a social phenomenon such as superstition or cults, a book of therapeutic case studies.
I’m about to finish Elizabeth Kostova’s fascinating novel The Historian, well recommended to me by flutherite @sdeutsch (I’ll listen to her suggestions again) and, simultaneously, The Plague, by Albert Camus (for a third reread). On deck are The Big Dig, by Linda Barnes; How We Decide, by Jonah Lehrer; Mortal Love, by Elizabeth Hand; and Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami.