The Book Jar

I found this idea on one of the Pinterest pages that I've been following.... a jar filled with little slips of paper.... each paper with a book title written on it. The idea is to pick a slip of paper from the jar and the title written on the paper is the book to choose from your "waiting-to-be-read" shelf.

Any good collector and reader of books usually has either a pile of books or a dedicated shelf filled with books that haven't yet been read. What almost always happens is that one picks from the top of the pile or the beginning of the shelf, and the books at the bottom (or at the end) tend to stay there for much too long a time. And that's what happened to me, beginning just after Christmas, when I started to read the books I had received as gifts, rather than reading the books that had been waiting there patiently since before the holidays.

Enter the Book Jar. Or, in my case, The Book Box. I used a pretty box that had contained a Christmas gift... on top of the box, I made a printed label which says, of course, "The Book Box,"  Then I sat in my library and wrote down the titles of all those books that haven't yet been read... into the Book Box went the folded-up slips of paper. From now on, when I go up to the library to choose a book, I will take a slip from the Book Box, and that's what I'll read. No exceptions. Unless, of course, I want to re-read a book that's already found a home on my bookshelves.

So that's what I did last night... took the cover off of that pretty box, put my hand in and swirled the little papers around, and chose one. Put the cover back on the box, sat in my favorite chair up there, and read the little slip of paper.

And wouldn't you know... the slip of paper I chose had the title of a book I just bought last week. That particular book was right there at the very end of the shelf.  Oh well. No exceptions. So that's the book I've started to read. And the other books... are still waiting patiently until I pick their titles from the box.