The Stack

No, no, not "The Shack,"
The Stack.

With yesterday being Read Across America Day, I decided to spend a few guilt-free hours just reading. The challenge was choosing what to read.

I heard once that what you read tells a story about you. It was in one of those "random kinds of questions editors or agents might ask" sessions and this one caught my attention.

"So, what are you reading right now?"

Whew. Well, I actually keep three stacks of books at my bedside. The ones I'm actually reading, the ones that I've just finished reading (or want to read parts of again), and the "I plan to read these real soon" titles.

But for better or for worse, here's my stack:

Actually reading:

*My Bible (on an aside, I read a review for a very interesting new book called Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible By David Plotz - I LOVE the concept because, trust me, it's all there! Romance, intrigue, mystery, law, humor, espionage, natural disasters, alternate lifestyles, dieting...the works!)
*Clutter's Last Stand by Don Aslett
*In the Teeth of the Evidence and Other Mysteries by Dorothy Sayers
*Much Ado About Murder edited by Anne Perry

The ones that I've just finished reading (or want to read parts of again):

*The Mysterious Mr. Quin by Agatha Christie
*Thrones, Dominations by Dorothy Sayers & Jill Paton Walsh
*Olive, the Other Reindeer by J. Otto Seibold and Vivian Walsh
*Starsky & Hutch #7 adapted from TV by Max Franklin (although in fairness, my husband put this on my stack. Not sure I remember why but I think it had to do with the clothes they wore or something)
*God is Closer Than You Think by John Ortberg (have to admit, I like Ortberg's writing but I bought this one for the cover)
* 4 back issues of Reader's Digest (which I should file because I don't expect to read them any time soon)
*8 issues of Focus on the Family magazine (see filing comment above - I've read a few articles but it may be awhile for the rest)
*and a Wild Card - The Look: Does God Really Care What I Wear? by Nancy Leigh Demoss (seriously, I have no idea how this got there and have never even heard of it before. Obviously it's not in the right stack.)

Hmmm. I think some of these titles are overflow from the next stack,

"I plan to read these real soon":

*The Octopus's Garden: The Secret World Under the Sea by Dr. Mark Norman
*The King of Torts by John Grisham
*SSN by Tom Clancy
*The Saracen Blade by Frank Yerby (may not get far in this one but we'll see)
*Monster by Frank Peretti
*Crazy Facts About Spiders (Scholastic edition)
*Season of Life by Jeffrey Marx
*Chazown by Craig Groeschel
*The Search for Significance by Robert McGee
*Snoopy's Guide to the Writing Life edited by Barnaby Conrad and Monte Schultz
*a special abridged edition of The Spiderwick Chronicles: Great Escape that came in a cereal box

That's my personal stack. On the professional stack, well, it's more of a library sort of stack. But I hear books also have insulation value so I know that when I sit down to read in my studio, I'll have a nice warm place to do it. And the really good ones I'll let you know about so you can read them too.

For yesterday, I chose to finish Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy. Next time it might be At the Altar by L.M. Montgomery. And we browsed some of A Treasury of Bunny Stories by Beatrix Potter.

What's in your stack?