I fancy myself a great reader but in reality I am not as a good reader as much as I am a great collector of books. I haven’t read as much of the books in my place I would like or as much I let on. So here’s the plan. I am going to read every book in my apartment and keep log of it. That includes cookbooks and magazines but I am drawing the line at newspapers. As a journalist I am obliged to keep too many as it is.

The challenge isn’t just in the sheer volume of volumes. I have quite few a French books, mostly novels and poetry, that I use to keep my French in practice. But I have four volumes of official histories of the Italian Army and my Italian is rusty. I have two German histories and a libretto from the Magic flute and I don’t speak German. That’s what happens in Grad School. You never say no to a book. Will I learn German? Not bloody likely, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

It isn’t just Grad School. A few weeks ago I picked up War In The Liberal Conscience, a volume of First World War poetry and Chester Wilmot’s The Struggle For Europe out of a box on Winchester St. I dusted the snow off them. I was pleased as punch. Maybe it’s the people who go to Grad school.

I did my master’s in Military history — I wrote a thesis on the Italian Army in the Second World War — so there is a lot of history to read. A lot of it will be Italian and a good deal of it military. Oh dear. I am going to have to read my own thesis.

Getting through the fiction section makes me a little nervous. Whether by aspiration or obligation I have acquired a shelf full of literary fiction that I have never gotten around to reading. To be honest, my taste in fiction also veers towards the historical. There is a special place in my heart and my library for the ancient history murder mystery.

Wow, I have a lot of books. Before accounting for acquiring books this will take years.