Constant Churn in the Kindle Booklist

I've always read many books at once, sometimes dropping off for months at a time, often never finishing. The Kindle both helps and hinders such a process. I'm making a concerted effort to move books I've paid for to the top of the list often, but there are so many of the free books I've downloaded! Many of them, like Boethius, are books I've been 'getting around to' for decades. The real surprise find for me was Mugby Junction by Dickens. I'm still in the midst of it, but already amazed that of all the wide range of Dickens' work I was somehow drawn to download the one short story of his that feels like it fits firmly in the Kafka/Borges literary continuum. I may finish it tonight, or behave myself and read some of the more scholarly books I've paid for in the last couple of weeks like Geza Vermes Jesus in His Jewish Context.

One gap I feel very keenly is the absence of public domain translations of The Castle and Amerika by Kafka. Much as I like his works, I'm not going to learn another language just to read them (though I once had ambitions of learning Italian, and found a translation of Il Castello available). Chinese is enough to keep me occupied, especially with the daily and unrelenting addiction of reading books and newspapers in English on the Kindle.

I've subscribed to the Wall Street Journal, which I find much more engaging as a Kindle edition than it is in print, oddly enough, and download the Sunday New York Times (for 75 cents), mainly for the magazine and the book review. Another novelty from the Kindle, since I've been a very spotty newspaper reader for the last ten years or so, depending almost entirely on the Web for news.