The world is going to end next month and all I can think about are the books that I haven't read

My TBR pile early this year
To date, this has probably doubled. Aieeeee!

Well, this post's title holds true only if you believe the Mayan calendar. Still, the thought of the world ending does make for good conversations, no? What would you be doing on the last day, who would you like to spend those last days with, would you run around naked on the streets, etc. (If it were indeed the last day, drunk, horny, and naked people on the street would be the last thing that I want to see. Unless I'm one of them.)

But what if the world is really ending, and we just have a month to go before everything goes kaput? I'd go on panic mode and think of all the books that I haven't read and all the authors whose works I haven't even sampled! The brilliant nonsense of Finnegan's Wake! Charles Dickens and his doorstoppers! All those Greek classical works about fathers boinking their daughters, and mothers falling for their sons! Argh! (FYI: I'm actually using Dickens's Our Mutual Friend as a doorstop. Pic coming up soon.)

Maybe it's a sign, no? A sign that I should stop (or at least temporarily put on hold) those book-buying binges and just conquer that mountain of a TBR pile instead. There's an idea, albeit it's something I've vowed to do before and wherein I've repeatedly failed.

I keep imagining how the world will eventually end. And I think T. S. Eliot got it right. In his poem, "The Hollow Men," the poet laureate wrote these beautiful words:

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.