It used to be that I had a rough measure of how busy I’d been by looking at the pile of books beside the bed. For most of my life, going back well into childhood, there has always been a pile of books beside my bed. These are books that I intend to read soon. Sometimes the ones on top are books I am in the middle of reading. I am almost always in the middle of reading several books at the same time, which complicates things. The pile shrinks as I finish books (or, occasionally, as I get far enough into a book to realize that no, I don’t want to finish this one). And it grows whenever I go to a bookstore, or a convention, or browse piles of free books, or… well, you get the picture.

Certain things about the pile have changed over the years, of course. When I was middle school aged, for instance, much of the pile was made up of library books. The pile changed out a lot quicker, back then, as well. I went through a period of a couple of years where I read at least one entire novel nearly every day. So I would take books back to the library every few days and bring home more. In high school my pace slowed down a little bit, and a much larger proportion of the pile was paperback books, usually picked up at one of the used book stores. I did a lot of trading books back in to buy more back then. I also borrowed a lot of books from friends (and loaned a bunch).

I’d also been a member of the science fiction book club for a long time. I got suckered into it when I was about 13 years old. I say suckered mostly because I didn’t really have a concept of just how difficult it was to remember to mail back in the little card that said, “No, I don’t want the automatic selection this month.” Which I had to do most of the time if for no other reason that, as a kid, I didn’t have the money to pay for the book and the shipping. I did acquire about a shelf worth of books that way, though.

But most recently the pile by the bed has become a lot more static than it used to be. Mainly because I don’t read hardcopy books nearly as much. Most of my reading is ebooks, switching between reading on my phone or iPad. The apps do a decent job of keeping track of where I left off on the other device when I switch. It’s just so much easier, when I find myself stuck in line at the bank, let’s say, to pull out the phone and open either iBooks or the Kindle app.

It didn’t happen all at once. My gateway drug, as it were, to non-paper books was the audio book—for which I usually blame my husband. He loves to listen to audiobooks, mostly sci fi and fantasy, while he plays video games. Usually listening over the stereo in the computer room. Except in the summer, because the fans make it a little hard to hear clearly, so then he switches to headphones.

I don’t know how many times I went into the computer room to do something that should have taken 5 minutes or less, only to wind up sitting in there for a half hour or more listening to the book he was listening to. Of course, often if it was a book that we also owned in hardcopy, I’d head into the other room, find the paper book, and sit down to finish it off; because of course I can read it myself much faster than the reader can read it aloud.

Though I have to admit that the real culprits are a pair of Jims. James Marsters and Jim Butcher, to be exact. But they had some accomplices.

I was in my late thirties when, somehow, I deluded myself into the idea that signing up for a book club would be a good idea, again, so I was a member of the science fiction book club, again. At least by then you could do your ordering and/or declining to order on-line, so the number of times I got books I didn’t mean to was a lot lower. I’d been mostly declining, only buying a few books a year for quite some time. I bought my first Dresden Files books because I’d had a few friends recommend the books, (generally by expressing shock when we were discussing the short-lived TV series when they found out I’d never read the books). In early late 2007 or early 2008 the book club had a deal on a four-volume set that contained the first eight books in the series. So I bought them, and then they sat in the pile by the bed for a few months. After being laid-off from the place I’d worked at for more than 20 years, one night when I was between contract jobs, I picked up the first volume and started reading. I stayed up all night reading through the first two books. Over the course of the next week or so I read through the rest of the series.

While chatting about the series with another friend, she expressed surprise, given what a big fan I was of the character of Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel the Series, that I’d never gotten the Dresden audio books. “I can have Spike read bedtime stories to me?” I asked, in disbelief. The original distributor of the audiobooks even offered a free download of the first four or five chapters of the first book!

One of the first purchases I made once I landed a job as a “regular employee,” was the audio version of the first Dresden book. Which began my pattern of reading the paper copy of the book first, then buying the audiobook and listening to it again and again…

I have noticed lately that my book buying habits have made another change. There are books I still buy in hardcopy. I am easily lured into used book booths at conventions, for instance, and almost always buy something. But generally speaking, I get annoyed for new books if I can’t find an e-book version. In the last year or so, there are books that I’ve just decided not to get because they are only available in hardcopy. If I really like a book once I’ve read it digitally, I may well buy a paper copy to cuddle up with for re-reads, but the e-book has become my preferred format.

I don’t think that’s necessarily a good or bad thing. Though given how much energy we’ve spent, over the years, trying to keep the book shelves in order, occasionally going through the lot and pulling out books we know we’ll never look at again to give away or attempt to sell, I have to admit that letting books pile up on the computer is a whole lot less work.

But it’s also the convenience of always having a whole bunch of books in my pocket that wins the day. So the pile by the bed changes much more slowly, now. I don’t think it will ever go away entirely, but it is no longer an indicator of how much reading I’ve been doing.