So Many Books, So Little Carry Space

It’s the middle of January, which means I’m counting down the days (six and a half!) until my annual pilgrimage to the Lifeline Bookfest. The Brisbane edition of this is billed as the biggest secondhand book sale in the southern hemisphere, and it’s where I buy nearly all my books. So today I sat down with pen and paper and began making my list of books and authors to look out for.

I soon had a list of 50 51 books and 34 authors. It sounded quite unimpressive until I realised that of the works of those 34 authors, there were nearly 330 books that I don’t have.

That’s 380 books altogether. And that’s not including the probably sizeable list of books that I’ve forgotten about. Or the ones I haven’t heard of but will stumble across on the day. It’s times like this I wish I could afford to get my license and run a car; fighting the traffic on the Pacific Motorway would be worth it to be able to bring home more books than just what I can carry. Of course it really is the luck of the draw as to what’s laid out on the tables at the particular time I happen to be browsing; probably I won’t find even a tenth of the 380.

Which could be a good thing: After all, where would be the fun in a world with nothing left to read?