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Emily Temple of Literary Hub has come up with <a href="http://lithub.com/how-many-books-will-you-read-before-you-die/">estimates of how many books one might read until one shuffles off this mortal coil</a>. (As an aside, the mortal coil bit is originally from *Hamlet* and Billy Shakes had more fun with it in his Elizabethan style: *"What dreames may come, When we haue shufflel'd off this mortall coile, Must giue vs pawse."*)

Her guesstimate for me is that I have a bit more than a thousand books left. Rather depressing. Even if I went back to speed-reading (which I did for a while in my late teens and early twenties, i.e. when the earth was still cooling), I'd probably only up that to five or six thousand. 

I'm somewhere in the *voracious reader* category and typically am reading several books simultaneously. Voracious readers fall broadly into two categories: those who read one book rather quickly and then move on to another book that they read rather quickly, and those who jump between books. Either is a great way to read but, for what it’s worth, I fall into the second category.

Or at least I *did*, prior to falling down the rabbit hole and landing in Steemlandia. I used to read 40-50 books a year but now I’ve been reading *Good-Bye to All That* by Robert Graves for several months now. It’s a book that I cannot recommend highly enough, an autobiography that is mostly about his experiences on the western front during WW1, but also some of his life before and after the trenches.

I’m reading some of the *after* now, when he was at Oxford and friends with T.E. Lawrence:
>Professor Edgeworth, of All Souls’, avoided conversational English, persistently using words and phrases that one expects to meet only in books. One evening, Lawrence returned from a visit to London, and Edgeworth met him at the gate. ‘Was it very caliginous in the metropolis?’
>‘Somewhat caliginous, but not altogether inpissated,’ Lawrence replied gravely.

But if I’m *reading* less since becoming a citizen of Steemlandia, at least I’m *writing* more. So far, it’s been all short-format stuff: #freewrite and #fiftywords with an occasional #zapfic along the way. Still haven’t done a longer piece, maybe #nanowrimo *next* year? 

There’s the germ of an idea for a longer piece, which may or may not get written:

*A science fiction novel set in 2048. The cryptocurrency revolution has changed **everything**. The fiat regime has imploded, nation-states have all but ceased to exist. The STEEM-powered space elevator has been operational for seven years, and over three million people live in earth orbit, with another million further out (Moon, Mars, Titan, etc.). The protagonist’s father has recently died and as the grieving daughter goes through her dad’s effects, she stumbles onto an old forgotten Bitcoin paper wallet. Using the private key, she’s stunned  to learn that she now controls three trillion Satoshis, a staggering windfall that makes her one of the wealthiest people in the solar system.*


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There’s just not enough time. My book piles (physical and virtual) of reading I want to do is big *and constantly getting bigger*. I’ve only read about a dozen books in the Repairman Jack series, clearly I’m slacking. I *need* to read more Charlie Huston. I’ve only scratched the surface of the great Russian writers. Most of Borges awaits. *In Search of Lost Time* sits on the shelf giving me a come-hither wink. And then there’s so much non-fiction waiting in the wings. *How to Play the Piano* by James Rhodes beckons. And on, and on, and on.

There is not enough time. Aaaaarrrrggghhh.....

*Odd factoid: I’d thought that I’d come up with that “So many books, so little time” witticism, but now I’m not sure. I recently found out that it’s a Frank Zappa quote. Did Frank and I come up with it independently, or did I read something from/about him years ago that I’ve now forgotten about?*


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In other news, 
**<a href="https://steemit.com/writing/@preparedwombat/you-really-need-to-follow-donallogue">You Really Need to Follow @donallogue</a>**




*image credit: both from Pixabay*