<p>I’m currently reading <em>The Power Broker</em>. Are you impressed? You should be. I am big-boy writer who reads big-boy books. A thousand-page investigation into the life of a powerful bureaucrat is nothing to me. I’m gonna finish <em>The Power Broker</em>, and then you will regard me as one of the world’s elite readers, as you should.</p>
<p>There’s just one problem. I’m also reading <em>Paper</em>, by Mark Kurlansky. And <em>Island of the Blue Foxes</em>, by Stephen Brown. And <em>Coffeeland</em>, by Augustine Sedegwick. And a dozen other books too, all at the same time. I also paused in the middle of reading all of those books to read, in its entirety, a history of The Cars, even though I was never that into The Cars. Reading that book led me to reading an entire oral history of MTV’s first decade on the air, which led me to reading an entire oral history of the Sunset Strip hair metal scene in the 1980s. Oh and after that, I finally started in on Mick Herron’s <em>Slow Horses</em> novels, which I’m definitely gonna finish before I return to all of those other books I’m reading, like the first one I mentioned. <em>The Power Broker</em>. I think that was the name of it.</p>
<p>I’ll get back around to Robert Caro’s Pulitzer-winner eventually. For now though, it sits in my Kindle library, sharing low completion percentages with multiple other tomes, some of which I haven’t picked back up in years. I also have a pile of somewhat-read dead-tree books stacked next to my nightstand. That pile used to rest <em>on</em> my nightstand before it grew too tall and wobbly. Now it serves as its own little extra nightstand in our bedroom. Sometimes I throw a t-shirt onto it.</p>