The Hazards of Borrowing Before Christmas

Why, oh why did I visit the library - twice! - in mid-December? Probably I should have known better, but I checked out a bunch of books anyway. The upshot of this is that on Christmas Day I had five books piled up on my bedroom floor waiting to be read and returned, and another four under the tree.

The power of novelty being what it is, I went straight for the new goodies rather than the ones with due dates attached. Now I’m faced with the challenge of finishing all seven remaining books in a shade under two weeks, or crossing my fingers and hoping I can renew the ones I need to. I know I should have set the new ones aside until I’d finished all the library volumes, but ... well, my To Be Read piles are testimony to my ability to resist temptation.

Naturally I’m trying to justify it, by telling myself it would be bad manners to leave those thoughtfully-chosen presents gathering dust while I worked my way round to them. And I'm promising myself that next year I’ll do better. I’ll give my library card a rest and spend December reducing my TBR stacks in preparation for the forthcoming Lifeline Bookfest.

And with my luck, Christmas will bring me not a single book.

Considering that possibility, I’ll end up in the library again next December, getting out a handful of books ... just in case.