While there are many, many things that get away from us (and to share here would be sharing too much), I've been thinking a lot about that one book - or two or three or twenty - that you feel compelled to read, that is the classic, or the difficult, or the overwhelmingly suggested, but that you've not yet read.
There are many classics I've not yet read - many that seem, by all accounts, critical to my worth as a writer. As I sit here among stacks of new books (and stacks and stacks), I find I'm ever-editing a growing shopping cart of books at Powell's: the great unread books from years past.
At the top of my list today? Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. I know the vague outlines, I know the plot points and key quotes. 
I am now painfully aware of the upcoming film (that, I just learned, may star Leonardo DiCaprio) and feel it is ever-more-urgent to read it now, now, now before the film wrecks it all.
We all have those books - the ones we know are somehow critical to our understanding of all the literature that has come after them, the ones that are referenced time and time again by contemporary writers that we adore and yet can't quite fully enjoy because we miss these references out of our own laziness.
And so - I renew my vow to read more of these self-deemed must-reads. I strengthen my resolve to let less get away from me in my quest to read the newest first novel from the newest of new writers.
What's gotten away from you?
