I have no bedside table. It's a design thing, part of an effort to keep the bedroom very spare. But I recently decided to "build" a bedside table by taking a stack of books, books I don't intend to read anytime soon, and building them into a tower just high enough and broad enough to hold my small alarm clock. And if I were a smart person, such as Keith, I would include a photograph here.

I provide this detail because it's obvious that someone who has a fake TBR pile must have a pretty formidable real one. And mine just grew by six or seven books over the past four days, which has wreaked all sorts of havoc with The Reading Project.

I started off with such good intentions, packing THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, ARTHUR AND GEORGE, and DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP in my backpack for my four days in St. Petersburg, Florida, where I was part of the faculty at the second annual Writers in Paradise conference. I also had six student manuscripts, which took priority over everything.

But upon arrival, I found myself in the presence of many collegial writers, some of whom I had read (Dennis Lehane, Les Standiford, Stephen King) and some new to me (Sterling Watson, Peter Meinke, Thisbe Nissen, Tom Franklin, Catherine McKinley.) Over the course of our time there, all of these writers read from their work and each reading left me wild to read more. So I've dipped into Watson's SWEET DREAM BABY and Nissen's THE GOOD PEOPLE OF NEW YORK, and I hope to read all the others over the next few weeks.

So, a digression. But one I can't regret. SWEET DREAM BABY is living up to Lehane's praise (he said it was one of the best noir novels written in the past decade); THE GOOD PEOPLE OF NEW YORK has already made me laugh out loud. I know all the other books I carried home will please me as well.

Some say my new bedside table is a cry for help. I think it's a creative use of neurosis.