I'm addicted to books.
It's not that I have a lot of money, or that I have a lot of time. I am not endowed with excess amounts of either. I'm neither a fast reader nor a voracious enough one to stay awake all hours of the night for even the most engrossing novel. Nor am I a disciplined enough reader to spend the evening turning pages instead of taking in a couple of episodes of The West Wing on DVD. Worse yet, I go to the gym, or out to dinner, or to the grocery store, or stay late at the office, or play with my dog, or while away hours on the web...
But somehow, I always find more books I want, or need, or at the very least plan to read. Today I went to the store and in twenty minutes had four books in my hand, having passed three others I forced myself to leave on the shelf, and plenty of sections I avoided altogether because I knew they'd only lead to more trouble.
I picked four. I put two back. But I'll probably own them before the month is out.
And I have another coming from Five Books, Five Authors--not to mention the magazine subscriptions--this month.
And I have stacks--stacks!--of books I've owned for years yet still never read. Last month I swore to buy less books than I read, and I did; but only by spending all day Saturday finishing one book and all day Sunday reading another.
Yesterday, I had settled on finishing American Gods and traipsing through The New Kings of Nonfiction for the first couple weeks of this month. But now I'm itching to blast through The Graveyard Book and then dive into Columbine. Not sure yet what I'll decide. Maybe I'll read all four at once--but that might mean that only these four get read (and maybe none completed) this month.
Who knows? This much is certain: I'll keep you posted.