I find, quite suddenly, that I have too much to read. Last year, I made myself a promise that I failed to keep–I was going to re-read Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury, and I wanted to do it before Halloween. I wanted to really experience October and remember a book I haven’t read in…my gods, has it really been eight years? Yeah, I suppose it has. But I was distracted by something else, another book or too little time, and I never got around to it. This year, I’ve made myself the same promise. But I’m desperately in love with the book I’m reading right now, Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and I have five hundred more pages to go. And on top of that, the film of Alan Moore’s From Hell opens in less than three weeks, and I would like to be finished reading that before going to see the film. I often feel like I read too slowly, but it’s rarely built up like this. It’s a nice sort of pressure, sure–too much of a good thing–but it’s pressure nonetheless. Maybe I should have learned how to speed-read.