My Favorite Hydra

When I head out on vacation each summer, I take books along with me. Last year I was in too much a rush to make mindful decisions, so I took thirty books across the country. Plus my Kindle.  AND I visited the library once I was at my destination. All told, I read thirteen books that month. Many of them fun stuff, and some professional books requiring some dedicated quiet time.

It was relaxing and there was some sense of accomplishment... but my to-read list never gets any shorter.

Every time I read a book, this odd hydra thing happens--Ooo!  A resource I need to investigate.  And... there's another! There's an excellent chance that I will be ordering at least one more book (or adding it to a wish list) before I finish the first one. 

Monday I was minding my own business, reading Facing Feelings in Faith Communities. And there on the page popped out a great quote "Anger is not the opposite of love. It is better understood as a feeling-signal that all is not well in our relation to other persons or groups or to the world around us. Anger is a mode of connectedness to others and it is always a vivid form of caring...a sign of some resistance in ourselves to the moral quality of the social relations in which we are immersed..." (Beverly Wildung Harrison)

I did not even finish the page I was reading. Nope.  Grabbed the computer and started hunting for which book contained that essay, then searching for an inexpensive copy. The Internet is a delightfully dangerous thing. It's the perfect pairing of inexpensive prices and books of any vintage or rarity.     

Today Making the Connections: Essays in Feminist Social Ethics showed up on my doorstep. Two hundred sixty-three pages of book PLUS extensive notes and indexing.  When will I possibly get to that? And if I do, how many more books will it add to my list?

Edited 4/10/14 to add- And then I finally get around to reading my April CLF (Church of the Larger Fellowship) newsletter and there's a great article about the power of books (and Beacon Press, who published the aforementioned volume!) by Meg Riley.  Well worth the read.