All these books, most of which are discounted; not your topic, not your genre.

Freedom of choice makes my head thick and dizzy. Survival is the culling of choices. To choose I must choose to forsake possibilities.

Closing in. There are those you have read before so many times their impact is lost in the deep ruts you have made through them; the comfortingly familiar terrain now smothered in mists of ennui; a journey too easily made, unchallenging.

A collection; a rockpool of remarkable creatures to examine as they go their separate ways. I add it to the catch.

Books are judged not just by their covers, but their blurbs, first words. One woeful volume gives away the plot twist inside the cover. Another clanks spastically into predictable life, the new glossy shell betrayed by the chattering clockwork and hissing steam-pipes inside; a lie, nothing truly new here, some fine old story got its original brass fittings torn off and replaced with cheap parts.

A garish shell, an unpromising blurb, the psychic stench of old formulae, undead sequels, and in one case, a spectral, grim presence of a stony-faced evangelist intent on dragging his victim’s souls to heaven.

Sometimes there’s a charm in the mass-produced, flimsy, cheap-and-cheerful, the bulldada that despite its triteness and evident wrote-by-numbers formulae still assumes it can be taken seriously. We love to hear the old stories repeated endlessly, over and over, lullabies for the mind.

A familiar name; time for a punt; sometimes even a trusted author can sonambulate through a work.

Bestsellers, bestsellers, are you bestsellers because of pedigree or because of some publisher’s faith in self-fulfilling prophecy?

I can’t sit in front of the computer all the time, devouring slabs of fanfic or downloaded PDFs of this-and-that. A book I can read, laying on my bed before finally passing out in a haze of heat and as near to no-mind as I can get.

There’s something shameful about being unable to finish a book; at the same time, there’s the grim realisation that sometimes you cannot go on; the scenery is all wrong and there’s a great cloth patch in the sky; or maybe the language is like scree slopes, speargrass and stinging nettle; or the characters are misshapen horrors in black and white hats.

For better or worse, the choices are made, time to take them home. These books will pass, and unto the library they and I will return.