India, Feb. 22 -- I am in Bombay, downstairs in the garden, journaling at the wooden table. All around me, the birds cheep, chatter and squawk. Bright green parakeets take off in flight; a brown-grey kite sits still, high on the palm tree next to me.

But I've been restless. February is ending, the year moving forward, and I feel... stuck somehow. And then this reader email arrives.

Dear Book Box, Every January I make a reading goal. This year I made a list of "important" books I've been meaning to read forever, like War and Peace and Shoe Dog by Phil Knight.

But it is almost the end of February and I'm already behind on my list. Plus there are so many important new books coming out-books that people are talking about-and I, who think o...