It’s a gray, rainy day, perfect for endless cups of tea and a good book (or books). I have a pile of tomes beside me now: a memoir, a biography, a book of poetry and a novel. I keep checking books out of the library even though I already have a pile of unread volumes at home. And not just one library, either — I borrow from several.

All of this has brought to mind something my parents said to us when we were kids. Whenever we went out to eat, especially to cafeterias (those monuments to overeating that I still sometimes hanker for), the rule was you could take as much as you wanted from the line but you had to eat it all. Groans of “I can’t eat another bite” were met with the adage, “Your eyes are bigger than your stomach.”

I stare at my pile of books. I’d like to inhale them, to have an immediate transfusion of their knowledge and inspiration into my starving brain. At the same time I don’t want to forgo the pleasure of savoring each page. I am sated but unbowed. My eyes are bigger than my stomach.