Harmless Addiction?

I can’t stop buying books. Just can not.

At the very time we are (slowly, very slowly) selling much of our home library on abebooks.com, I am still clicking on “buy now” or going to a bookstore and finding something I just must have. We sold a book yesterday, and Joyce sent it winging off to its new owner; today, I’ve already bought two forthcoming books: the latest novel by Gail Godwin and a comic novel based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. At that rate ... well, I was no math whiz (to say the least), but the future seems fairly certain: more piles of books I don’t know what to do with.

Joyce is better—much better—at self-control. To be honest, though, she knows she doesn’t need to buy all that many books because I’ll do it—and she will read them. In a way, it’s kind of like second-hand smoke. You can quit—but you can also hang around with smokers. And thereby possess both virtue and smoke.

In most other ways I don’t really have an addictive personality. I was a smoker back in my college days and early 20s, but I gave it up without much hassle when our son was born (I was 27). Haven’t had one since.

I was a beer drinker from college days (never really cared much for “hard” liquor—or wine, even)—and never really tried to quit. Until the early 1990s when I began to train to hike the Chilkoot Trail in Alaska—the trail that figures prominently in The Call of the Wild. I decided to quit drinking—and did. It was easy for me—no virtue whatsoever involved.

I was lucky. I’ve had friends who had a terrible time giving up tobacco and/or alcohol. I am not at all “better” than they; as I said, I was lucky. My body just said, “Good idea, quitting. Let’s do it.”

So—haven’t smoked since the early 1970s, haven’t had a drop of alcohol in nearly thirty years. Again—not bragging, just telling about something that, for me, was relatively easy.

But books? Another story (so to speak).

About the only modification I’ve made in my buying habits is my Kindle. On it, I buy and read thrillers and mysteries in bed in the evening. (Nothing like pumping your heart rate up just before you  try to go to sleep, eh?)

But I’ve got to buy important new books—or books by writers I love. I mean, I just have to, right?

Finding a place to put them all ... now that’s another story (so to speak).

My mother was somehow able to get rid of all of hers (and she had a lot)—donated them to the library and to charities. In her final apartment, she had just one bookshelf. Quite a reduction. (Think: Mike Bloomberg with only a $10 bill to his name.)

So ... what will happen? The inevitable. Always the inevitable. But, lord, is it fun and comforting (and, okay, self-deceptive) to be surrounded by a gajillion pages!