7 Books Til Christmas

Ah, Christmas time. The month of the year when it is not only acceptable but encouraged to eat as much delicious junk food as possible. This tradition used to bring me a lot of joy. Now, as a gluten-free person, it brings me a lot of terror. Homemade Christmas cookies are a minefield of potential allergens, while the non-gluten-free assure me that, “it’s ok to cheat a little. It’s the Holidays, after all.”

My only salvation is the advent calendar, especially the cheap ones they sell at department stores for a few bucks. Made with some obscure chocolate brand from a land where they’ve never heard of wheat, barley, or rye, these slim cardboard boxes come embossed with my favorite design in the world- a gold circle with the letters GF inside. Certified Gluten-Free. It takes a lot of self-control to limit myself to a socially acceptable number of calendars for one person (it’s still 5, right?) when the fear of reaction has been removed.

This year, I have no advent calendar of chocolate. Instead, my advent calendar is decidedly less edible (at least in a conventional sense). This year, my advent calendar is made of books.

As most of you may know, I have a very bad habit of buying more books than I can read, leaving me with an ever-growing To Be Read pile. As some of you may know, this has expanded from a pile to an entire bookcase. The population usually hovers around 36, with new books being added as soon as one or two disappear. Right now, it is at a record low of 25 books. With the coming of Christmas, the shelf is only guaranteed to grow more.

So, I’ve decided enough is enough. The Tsundoku (a wonderful word meaning the act of buying a book and leaving it unread) bookcase must be vanquished, or at least partially vanquished. There are nine cubbies on the shelf. 5 of them currently hold books. My goal is to get it down to 3 cubbies by Christmas, for a total of 18 books or less left on the shelf. This means reading 7 books in 13 days.

Side note- this is a decidedly more fun goal than paying off student loans. Why didn’t I buy 60,000 books instead of going to grad school? I’d very happily spend ten years paying off that debt.

The list of books to be read by Christmas is below. You can also follow my progress on GoodReads, which is a great site for readers if you’re not familiar with it. My username is Kaedance. Look for the “Advent Calendar” shelf. Then feel free to look at the “to-read” shelf and laugh at my inability to stop buying books.

To Be Read By Christmas:

Alice In The Country Of Hearts, Volume 1 by QuinRose & Soumei Hoshino
The Chocolate Thief by Laura Florand
Vacations From Hell by Libba Bray, Cassandra Clare, Claudia Gray, Maureen Johnson, and Sarah Mlynowski
Pet Robots by Scott Christian Sava, Diego Jourdan, and Villagran Studios
Peter & Max by Bill Willingham
Megatokyo Volume 1 by Fred Gallagher & Rodney Caston
Eclipse One, edited by Jonathan Strahan

Three of these are novels, three are graphic novels, and one is a collection of short stories. All of them have been on my shelf for more than 6 months, and some of them have been there for over 18 months. Hopefully, they’ll all soon be promoted to one of the “read” bookcases.

With that, I’m off to read. I mean, I’m off to work. And then read. No reading books at work. I’ve never tested it, but I feel it’s probably discouraged in favor of reading spreadsheets and reports.

Gotta make money so I can buy more books.