This is a parable. (I love parables, which makes me, I guess, a parabolic thinker.) I have referred to this tale in one of my books but it's not likely you'll ever see it., so I can repeat it. Once upon a time there was a poor baker and his wife who were having trouble making a living. One sad day the baker told his wife that they'd reached the end of their bin. "Tomorrow will be our last day," he said. "We have no money for supplies" A beggar came along asking for shelter and though the baker and his wife had little spare they took him in and shared what they had with him. In the morning, the beggar thanked the couple saying before he left, "Whatever you do first, that you will do all day." There wasn't enough flour to bake bread. The baker decided they would make a few cookies for a sick little girl down the street. Passers-by were lured into the shop by the fragrant aroma of the cookies. The baker and his wife were too busy to serve them, so the customers helped themselves and left money on the counter. The supply of flour never ran out, nor did the people eager to buy. By the end of the day, the baker and his wife had enough money to keep their business going. A rich grocer across the street watched this activity all day wondering what had happened. He asked the couple for their secret. "No secret," said the baker. "We took a beggar in for the night and in the morning he wished us well and was gone." The grocer decided that he and his wife must find that beggar and reap a similar reward for their bounty. They found the ragged man quickly enough and rushed him home for a hasty meal and a bed on the floor. When the beggar left in the morning, he said to the couple, "Whatever you do first, that you will do all day." And with that he was gone. "Wife," said the grocer, "we have to get ready for all the customers. You sweep the floor and I'll count the change in the till." And that's what they did, all day long , unable to stop to serve customers who left in disgust.

WHATEVER YOU DO FIRST, THAT YOU WILL DO ALL DAY.

I didn't get started right this morning and I remembered that. What next?

Years ago, in my Other Life, I cooked a lot. So I had a lot of cookbooks. Like my mother, I used to read cookbooks for the story, so it was fun to get a new one and meet a new cook. As the shelves sagged and overflowed and the cookbooks kept coming, I finally realized that if, on that day of dawning, I began to cook at least one item a day from the books already in my possession, I would not get through them all before I died. (Years later, Julie Powell decided to take a year and cook her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and look what happened to her. That's not a good example because she did very well.) Anyway, I sort of stopped buying cookbooks, and as I kept moving, and trying to trim down, I gave a lot away to my kids who had come of cooking age. I say sort of, because then I began to collect Weight Watchers' cookbooks and they kept changing the points system so I had to keep up with them. And then I caught on to this thousand-dollar cookbook online - dear Epicurious, worth its weight in spatulas. Well, and I also wrote three cookbooks, and did my own testing, but that's not what I want to say right now. I've been thinking, if I managed to slow - not stop, but slow - the flood of cookbooks coming into my kitchen, why can't I take note and stop buying so many other books? I buy more than I read. Lovely, lovely books are filling new shelves ( I need more new shelves now) waiting for me to get to them, and I do, but not fast enough. I read I guess three or four books a week (and then there's the re-reading) on average, more if I am researching something or pursuing a line of thought, but I take in more books than that. And I have realized, as i did on that day when I declared an almost-moratorium on cookbooks, that I should STOP BUYING BOOKS RIGHT NOW because I have more than I am going to manage to read in my remaining lifetime. But the publishing industry (and writers) are suffering enough as it is because fewer people are reading, and those who are, are reading other things, like e-books and graphic novels and Twitters and blogs and even cookbooks which you might think would go on forever but no. People do not read cookbooks for the story now or even for the recipes; they read them to see what celebrities are doing in (and out of) the kitchen. You know what? I'm going to go and cook something. And read.