Book Talk: The Tyranny of a Terrific Read

I shamefully confess my ignorance: I’ve never so much as cracked open a book by John Sanford. But I will.

Or at least I intend to. I ordered a copy of “The Winters of That Country” as soon as I finished the last words of Aris Janigian’s heart-wrenching piece on the author whose voice was “as deep and harrowing as a prophet’s” (“Burning Bridges Brilliantly,” page 20). It’s always so inspiring, after all, to learn of a literary gem like this.

Then again, it’s also so horribly oppressive. As much as Janigian’s article delighted me, it filled me with guilt, limning the huge gaps in my knowledge: Once I’m done with “Winters,” I’ve got 23 more books by Sanford to go. When will I ever get to them all?

Should I somehow manage it, there are scores of other unread books perched all over my house. And then there’s this daunting fact: The Library of Congress boasts 530 miles of bookshelves of its own.

Last spring, during the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes ceremony at UCLA, I was alarmed not only by all of the wonderful works I hadn’t read, but also by how many I hadn’t even heard about. Yet that wasn’t the worst of it.

The biggest blow of the evening came when the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement was presented. The honor, which last year went to mystery writer Tony Hillerman, is named for the newspaper’s late book critic who churned out five--yes, that’s right, five--reviews a week (plus a Sunday essay) for nearly 30 years.

Never mind writing that much. How could one man read that much?

“It was a natural gift,” says author Jonathan Kirsch, son of this Evelyn Wood on steroids. He recalls how at dinner parties his father would go to a friend’s shelf, select a tome that he had never read, digest the entire thing in 20 minutes and then proceed to nail the answers to any questions about the book that were thrown his way.

I myself am not a particularly fast reader. Nor am I an especially slow one. That’s not my excuse. Rather, life intrudes. Work is busy; the kids have to be schlepped somewhere; the dog needs a walk. Plus, this season, time that might well be spent reading is sucked into that three-hour black hole known as the NBA.

Still, I try. I really try. This afternoon, you will find me on the sun-splashed balcony off my bedroom, happily reading my latest pleasure, Michael Ybarra’s biography of Sen. Pat McCarran, “Washington Gone Crazy.”

If Sanford’s book has arrived, it will have its rightful place too--somewhere in the pile on my nightstand, my monument to good intentions rising ever higher.