Shame Pile/Dirty Limericks

As I'm typing this, staring at me is a stack of books--some of which have been read and well-loved, most of which have not been opened, but have been sitting on my desk collecting dust for many months. I think I echo many of my classmates' feelings here in saying that I have a lot of books I want to read and not enough time or energy to get to all of them. 

First on my stack is a small paperback--Agatha Christie’s Curtain. I picked this up over the summer at a used book store in Provincetown, remembering how much I loved reading And Then There Were None and watching the Poirot movies when I was little. I have no idea what the set-up is. What intrigued me here was the book's portability (fits nicely in a pocket), and the fact that it is “Hercule Poirot’s LAST and GREATEST case.” This is definitely a beach read. Therefore, it will stay unread on my desk for months to come. 

Moving down, I have Elif Batuman’s The Idiot, which was a gift from my coworkers when I finished my co-op a few weeks ago (I tried not to take it as a subtle dig at my job performance). This has been on my list for a while. I like funny books, and supposedly this is one. The problem here is that it’s about a college student. I can’t read this until I graduate because reading it might be “too real,” as they say.

Skipping down past a few wishful thinking books that I’ll probably never read (e.g. The Hobbit), ones I’ve read recently (e.g. Little Women), and abandoned ones I just couldn’t get into (e.g. Lincoln in the Bardo--gave me a headache), the base of my stack is supported by the BEST book I’ve ever owned. This one I also bought at a used bookstore, but I can’t remember where or when. I feel like it’s always been with me. The last book in my stack is a thoroughly loved, three-inch thick book of seventeen hundred DIRTY LIMERICKS from the 19th and early 20th centuries, published in 1953. This book has everything--an introduction about how the pieces were collected, an explanation about how the tradition spread, and an index whose topics include “Organs,” “Motherhood,” and “Oral Irregularity.” Most of the limericks are too racy to repeat here, but tucked within this book are two ripped out pieces of scrap paper from the previous owner, who was seemingly inspired to try their hand at a few poems. Unfortunately, the handwriting is almost impossible to read. I can only discern the line: “There once was a retailer named Jule, who had a remarkable tool.” I don’t really care how many unread books I have in my stack, but not knowing how that limerick ends haunts me every day.