Because let’s admit it: you are working on a full-time ghostwriting gig, you’re getting ideas for stories you don’t have the time to write, you keep spotting interesting open calls from high-profile magazines, all of this makes you supremely unhappy, you’re tired as hell… why not go and buy a stack of books you’ll never find the time to read?

And so yesterday, using an Amazon gift card that was about to expire, I went and got me a handful of new books, including a classic tome on Noir movies, David Abulafia’s massive The Great Sea, being a human history of the Mediterranean, and three fantasy novels. Oh, yes, and a pair of novellas. And I’ve added a few more books to my wish list.

And as I said, I do not know when I will find the time or energy to read all this stuff, but as all book lovers know, buying books is a completely different activity than reading them, and it carries its own reasons and positive effects.

In other news, the knitting yarn I ordered in January to try and spend February learning to knit has yet to appear – my beautiful, high quality knitting needles sit on the bookshelf and look at me with pity.
I have learned to juggle, poorly, but now that my wrist is aching I can’t practice.
And as we sit in the middle of the Red Zone, the number of cases is increasing, and the media are on a scaremongering campaign about vaccines – stuff like “woman dies under a bus, she had just got her COVID shot”.
Which in a way means I have a good hope of finding the time to read all these books, after all, when civilization finally collapses (and yes, I saw that Twilight Zone episode).

The fact that I always liked stories about worlds descending into madness did not mean I wished to live in one.
But there we are.