I’ve been trying to deny it, but I have an itch I need to scratch. You see, I just got myself all involved in a lengthy project, creating a wiki for Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series, books I very much enjoy, by the way, and I am faced with the daunting prospect of re-reading all the books. I have a good start — I have finished Part Two of the first book, Outlander, but I find my mind wandering to a certain other favorite of mine. I watch the movies. I troll the websites.

And then I turn back to Outlander, or the other book I’m reading, Gregory Maguire’s Mirror Mirror and I try to ignore the itch a little longer. Well, I can’t now, and darn it, I have never been able to successfully read three books at the same time. I don’t know how anyone does it. I think my upper limit is two. The thing is, I borrowed Mirror Mirror from our biology teacher, and I feel I should return it soonish. I’m not sure I want to stop re-reading Outlander, but I certainly need to slow it down. I go back to school on Monday, and that’s going to take up a great deal of time until summer, when I will have a longer vacation than usual due to the fact that our new building won’t be finished, and we won’t start back until after Labor Day (yay, because I’ve signed a contract for a third year at Weber, and I’m excited to be back).

So here is my conundrum. Which book do I put aside — for the time being, anyway? After all, the Outlander project is huge, and I can’t finish it until the summer, anyway, or else I’ll drive myself crazy.

Mirror Mirror, as I said, I borrowed, and I have devoted too much time to it to totally drop it, although I think it will be last Maguire I read, for reasons that will be clearer when I review it. I could probably finish it if I dedicated some time, say 20 minutes, each day to it until I was done. I also need to read the copy of Holes that the bio. teacher loaned me, but as that’s a children’s book, it won’t take me very long, I don’t think.

I don’t know. What I do know is that the lure of a certain boy wizard has become too strong to deny any longer, and it looks like I’m going to have to break out the crack, my copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone again. As they say, so many books, so little time. But these books are just so… different to me. I guess you could say they’re my desert island books.