Reading to the (Bitter) End

Now, I’m not buying into this whole reading of the Mayan calendar that claims we’re in for apocalyptic and literally earth-shattering events tomorrow. We have already survived more than a few predicted ends of the world over the last 2,000 years. Why believe these latest prognostications of doom, especially when they may we be based on a misunderstanding? As the Los Angeles Times reports, “NASA scientists and Mayan scholars say there is no reason to fear Dec. 21. They say the date simply marks the end of one 5,125-year cycle of the complex Mayan calendar and the beginning of another one.”

There’s nothing wrong, though, with employing this latest end-of-the-planet scenario as entertainment. Several media sources have already provided suggestions of what to read, if we actually have just a few pitiful hours left in which to bury our noses in books. (Cormac McCarthy’s The Road seems to be a popular choice.)

But what I want to know is this:

If our beloved but puny globe at the edge of the Milky Way does meet with destruction tomorrow, and we’re all swept away in a sea of fire, say, or a cataclysmic cascade of asteroids, what books will you not have finished reading?

I am not looking for your whole to-be-read list, just the titles and authors of books you’ve already begun.

OK, so I’ll go first. Here are the works of fiction and non-fiction that I would be leaving behind, only partially completed:

• An Instrument of Slaughter, by Edward Marston (Allison & Busby)

• Whiskey Island, by Les Roberts (Gray & Company)

• The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexander Dumas (Penguin)

• Fobbit, by David Abrams (Black Cat/Grove Atlantic)

• The Great American Railroad War: How Ambrose Bierce and Frank Norris Took On the Notorious Central Pacific Railroad, by Dennis Drabelle (St. Martin’s Press)

Now it’s your turn. List in the Comments section of this post the one or more books you’re in the midst of consuming, but wouldn’t have time to finish before the end of the day tomorrow, Friday.

I hope you will play along.

READ MORE: “The Maya Apocalypse Is Not Nigh,” by Alex Halperin (Salon); “The End of the World As We Know It, Again,” by Christopher Morgan (Criminal Element); “The Mayan Apocalypse: By the Numbers,” by Harold Maass (Mental Floss); “12 Signs That It’s the End of the World (As We Know It),” by Deborah Montesano (Addicting Info).