A Tale of Three Shelves

On my bookshelf there are the regulars, a dictionary, a bible and Harry Potter. There are a row of children’s books with big sprawling pictures, tattered spines and teeth marks from where Olive has began to snack on them. A cluster of Pony Pals novellas, a book ‘borrowed’ and never returned to its classroom shelf, books in german, guide books for far off places and other pages of tales. I pick up a book at random, an old favourite with pages edged in gold and engrained in my memory. On the shelf above live the newer books, they are fatter, wordier and less alluring to the eye. Political Theory, Philosophy of Religion - exposes on subjects I do not understand, but pretend to anyway. And then there is a large and higgildy-piggildy stack of books borrowed and given, waiting patiently to be read and I wonder if I had 100 more of these days, to lie about and do no more than read, would I ever actually finish them all? Perhaps, I decide, it shall be my life’s work.