The part of my brain that enables me to finish reading books is broken. As of recently. Not sure I can bring myself to say that I have become a chronic book-abandoner, but more like I keep buying and beginning new books while still partway through several others, which others I then grow reluctant to pick back up, unable to decide on any one that I’m in the mood to chip away at. (Might the part of the brain in question be, you know, my attention span?) I am told this promiscuous non-finisher habit is a totally normal condition for most bookish types (i.e. the Voracious Readers who simply Cannot! Stop! Reading! O calamity!) but for me this plate-spinning act is sort of new and it gives me a clammy feeling, the suspicion that I have become, or have long been, an egregious readerly flake-o-tron. On some gooey wide-eyed English-majory level I do want to read them all and finish them all but I take one look at these hillocks of god damn books multiplying like mushrooms, monopolizing coffeetable and nightstand, desk and floor, flocks of bookmarks accusingly sticking out of their middles — I take one look and something knocks me down and hauls me back to the stupid computer where I plug in again and keep skimming the bottomless well of blogs and feeds and videos and news and all that other wonderful unreading material. O calamity. Mike Patton, monologuing in Faith No More’s “RV”: Would anyone tell me if I was gettin’ stupider?