I was in a bookshop on Charing Cross Road this lunchtime in a vain attempt to get a birthday present for a friend. Seems London has run out of books of short stories by Magnus Mills. But they did have a 2 for 1 offer on Penguin Classics. "Wahey!" I thought, time to get myself some books I'd always meant to read.

Will I never learn?

I got myself The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius (it's a long story but I've been wanting to read this for ages). And I got The Koran by, erm, God (thought I ought to see what all the fuss was about).

A noble intention, but I know what will happen. I'll read the introduction, maybe make a start and then find that actually I'd much rather read the 1 minute interview in Metro. Then I will add both books to the ever growing worthy-books-I-meant-to-read-but-actually-I-couldn't-be-bothered-but-hey-look-what-i-bought pile. Already there are Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes (Nasty, brutish and short? I wish!), Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville (I couldn't get beyond the table of contents), The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon (I actualy read quite a bit of this, but still less than half, and that's half a massively abridged whole), to name but a few,

So then, dear reader - what books are sitting on your shelves lovingly unread?