How True!

[Ya Sam]

"In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title 
you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way 
through the shop pas the thick barricade of Books You Haven't Read, which 
were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you. But you 
know you must never allow yourself to be awed, that among them there extend 
for acres and acres the Books You Needn't Read, the Books Made For Purposes 
Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong 
To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written. And thus you pass the 
outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of the 
Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But 
Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them 
and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are 
Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You'll Wait Till 
They're Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback, Books 
You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You 
Had Read Them, Too. Eluding these assaults, you come up beneath the towers 
of the fortress, where other troops are holding out:


  the Books You've Been Planning To Read For Ages,
  the Books You've Been Hunting For Years Without Success,
  the Books Dealing With Something You're Working On At The Moment,
  the Books You Want To Own So They'll Be Handy Just In Case,
  the Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer,
  the Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves,
  the Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily 
Justified.

Now you have been able to reduce the countless embattled troops to an array 
that is, to be sure, very large but still calculable in a finite number; but 
this relative relief is then undermined by the ambush of the Books Read Long 
Ago Which It's Now Time To Reread and the Books You've Always Pretended To 
Have Read And Now It's Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them.
With a zigzag dash you shake them off and leap straight into the citadel of 
the New Books Whose Author Or Subject Appeals To You. Even inside this 
stronghold you can make some breaches in the ranks of the defenders, 
dividing them into New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Not New (for you or 
in general) and New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Completely Unknown (at 
least to you), and defining the attraction they have for you on the basis of 
your desires and needs for the new and the not new (for the new you seek in 
the not new and for the not new you seek in the new)."

Italo Calvino 'If on a Winter's Night a Traveller'

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