There is a scene in one of the Harry Potter films where Harry and his friends end up in a treasure vault which has been boobie-trapped with a “Gemino Curse,” a variant of the Doubling Charm. Each thing touched, instantly doubles. Touch those things and they double. This continues without end. I have sympathy for Harry in that scene. I know the feeling. Each book I read spawns more books to read. And those books spawn more books. This continues in an endless doubling, tripling, quadrupling that has been growing increasingly doubtful of my ability to read every book ever written.
At various times, my to-be-read list can have anywhere from dozens to scores of books on it, each one of which is a butterfly’s flap to who knows how many other books to read.
This was illustrated to me in a stark way this afternoon, after I began playing around with the Mind-Map plug-in to Obsidian, my new favorite text editor. I was trying to see how my reading had progressed–and how Mount To-Be-Read had grown–since the weekend, just a few days ago.
I picked the New York Times Book Review as my starting point. (The Washington Post and a few other lists may have been involved as well.) From this I started listing out the books that interested me and that I ultimately read. From there, I began listing books I came across in those books that interested me and that I either noted on my list, or read. From there… well, you get the picture.
This formed a simple outline in my text file, and with a few keystrokes, I’d turned it into a mind-map:
Since Sunday, I’ve read 3 of the books on the mind-map (Probable Impossibilities by Alan Lightman, In Praise of Wasting Time also by Alan Lightman, and When Einstein Walked with Godel by Jim Holt). I’ve also nearly finished (as in I will finish it this evening.) The three books that I have finished spawned eight other books that have since been added to the mountain that is my to-be-read list. If we go with 2.67 new books per book I read, those eight newly added books will spawn 21 more books to add. Those 21 books will spawn 56 additional books.
You get the idea. I’m reminded of poor Ali Sard, in Dr. Seuss’s Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?. Ali is the one who had to mow grass in his uncle’s back yard, quick-growing grass:
The faster he mows it, the faster he grows it.
The faster I read, the more I fall behind.
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