Like most readers, I have a substantial "to read" pile.

In my case this was made considerably larger a couple of years ago by going to the Downtown Community Ministry annual book sale, during the last hour of the last day. That last hour is characterised by a bunch of "one bag of books from table X for $N" (where N is a small number) offers, each available for a few minutes. So I got bunch of books that I was merely wondering if I wanted since there was no added (monetary) cost (it seemed a somewhat less wise plan when I was carrying three bags of books back to my car...)

At this point I've read maybe half of the books that I got in that sale two years ago, but in the meantime accumulated plenty more from various sources (often also second hand books) including presents (books are a very common gift in my family). So for a couple of years I've had a large, and growing, pile of books to read, despite trying to avoid getting too many more over the past year or so.

Prompted in part by someone online pointing out Unclutterer, a blog by Erin Doland, et al, (incidentally Erin has a new book Unclutter your life in one week -- which I'm tempted to get, but, well, another book...), I decided to rearrange this "to read" pile. And in the process figured I might as well quantify just how much was there.

I have over 25kg of books to read.

(What? Of course weight is the appropriate measure here. Particularly since much of my reading these days is in various forms of public transport or while out waiting on some event to start.)

I'm about to rearrange the books by category to make it easier to tackle the pile when I'm looking for something specific to read. But I think some books may be leaving again without having been read.

For the last decade or so (ie, since I actually had money to buy my own books) I wasn't particularly keen on libraries because you had to give the books back after a few weeks. More recently that seems like quite a benefit. Especially since most things I actually need to reference are online.

(It was slightly surreal sitting in a cafe reading Programming Mac OS X with Cocoa for beginners on Wikibooks on my phone, and finding the process fairly reasonable (the text was a bit small, but readable). We truely are living in the future. Last time I had that feeling was about 8-9 years ago, when I realised that my day starting with breakfast in front of the electronic newspaper, just like in Science Fiction.)