Books I'm grateful for

There's so much to be thankful for this year.  I've got my own novel Black Cow coming out in the new year, I've got a new novel in the works, and poetry flowing from the fingertips (and a very interesting proposal on something that I can't yet talk about but is exciting me).  But it's as a reader that I'm most grateful.  I'm grateful for my stack of 'to be read' books.  Yes, it's growing, and yes I have more books than time to read (or review) them, but in the overall scheme of things, I'm pretty happy to be in this situation.  I'm thankful for Julian Barnes' The Sense of An Ending, sitting patiently, in all its slim, elegant hardbackness, on my bedside table.  I'm also grateful for Umberto Eco's The Prague Cemetery, with its striking red and gilt wolf cover, promising the most erudite of terror.  Then there's my half finished Catch-22 (I'll be back soon Joseph), Richard Dawkins' and Dave McKean's The Magic of Reality, beautiful enough to have on the coffee table (though I don't actually have a coffee table), the lovely Buddhistic poetry book Mountains Belong to the People Who Love Them, which is almost finished (and it's been doing me so much good that I've nearly forgotten to blog), and many many more delicious books, all plump and juicy and beckoning to me from their steamy covers.

If I don't show up at your Thanksgiving dinner, it isn't because I'm not grateful for your invitation.  I'm not averse to turkey with cranberry sauce, or a lovely natter over a glass of vino.  It's just that there are so many good books out right now, that all I really wanna do, is sit like a statue (let's say, like Buddha) on my plump sofa and read all weekend long.  Happy Thanksgiving, and may all your stacks be enticing.