A Bluestocking Knits

Booking Through Thursday wants to know if and how we plan ahead….

1. Do you plan ahead for your reading? Work off of a to-be-read pile? A reading list? Or do you wing it, choose whatever you’re in the mood for?  A little of both, really.  I have a mental list of things that have piqued my interest, although since it is only in my head, I frequently forget what is on it, sometimes completely. 
2. If you do plan ahead, how far ahead? Do you have two or three books waiting in queue? Or are you backed up by dozens of volumes waiting their turn?  Well, I mean to plan ahead, but the road to, er, well, good intentions and all.  If I buy it, it goes into the queue, of course, and eventually gets read; sometimes I do have to browse around the shelves at home for something I’ve forgotten about, though.
3. If you do not plan ahead . . . well, never? What about if you’re reading a series? Or someone gives you a book for a present?  I did actually plan ahead for Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife, which I just finished — I’d checked the library catalog regularly, and was just on the verge of paying my 75 cents for a reserve, when I found it on the shelf.  (I enjoyed the book, time-travel being something that intrigues me.  One of the first time-travel things I ever read was a short story by Jack Finney, I can’t remember the title now, but it involved old postage stamps being used to send letters to the past — not the usual time travel, but fascinating nonetheless.  I thought that Wife was intriguingly written, and had some interesting differences from other time travel stories, such as here that Henry cannot take anything with him, not even his clothes — he even mentions glasses and fillings in his teeth at one point — while in say, Diana Gabaldon’s "Outlander" series the time traveler does not have this problem — of course with her time travel is an external force, and with Henry it is internal.  And it was different especially in that usually traveling in time is something that people want to do, whereas here it is something Henry has no control over, and makes the story as much about people dealing with a chronic condition, like cancer or a stroke, as it is about the physics and mechanics of time travel.)