This is what Google gave me when I searched for “humongous pile of books”. Which is what I have at home.

I’ve never been a fan of maths. Actually, let me qualify that as I’m sure maths is responsible for a lot of things I use every day. Like cars, for example. I’m not sure how, but maths has to be in there somewhere.

So it’d be more correct to say I’ve never been a fan of doing maths. Doing maths never leads to good things in my experience. Such as the little mathematical sum I did last week, which related to the books I have yet to read.

On the “to read” shelves at our place (which were made by my carpenter father-in-law and which I have been known to stand and admire from time to time) there are around 400 books. I say “around” because after a certain point counting them becomes both time-consuming and a reminder of how far my book reading lags behind my book buying.

If I take one week as the average time it takes me to finish a book (some will take only a few days but others will take more than a week – that’s why I said “average”) that means I have enough books to last me just over seven and a half years.

Jeez, that’s a long time. When it comes to the rest of my life, I don’t even know what I’m doing six months in advance and yet I’ve managed to map out my reading for the better part of a decade. Whoah, – “better part of a decade” – it sounds even worse when I put it like that.

That should mean I don’t buy any more books. After all, I’ve clearly got enough to last me quite a while. But you’d be wrong. I bought another one or two (okay, two. I bought two) books last week. When will I read those? At this rate, probably around 2021.