Living with The Book Bug (plus a Contest)

You know what I'm talking about. It's a common but harmless (although in some cases, contagious) problem many of us share. Most of us have had it all our lives. I was going to say that it's a problem one acquires upon learning how to read, but I suspect that most people who are afflicted are like me: they wanted to learn how to read so badly that the urge to acquire books came before actually knowing how to decipher them.

 

Source

At any rate, once you've been bitten by the book bug, the urge to constantly discover and own more books, your life will never be the same. Whether you're the kind of person who always has their collection neatly arranged on bookshelves (in your system of choice) or the type of person who has books in every room, haphazardly left lying around or in precarious stacks on tables, you will constantly be looking for more places to put books as you acquire more.

And the digital age hasn't really changed things all that much, at least for me. While my Kindle's memory gets filled with more and more books, I still can't walk away from print books. Every garage or estate sale, every library book sale represents potential book treasure, books that haven't been digitized or that I simply would never have known existed had I not been rummaging through that dusty box of books. 

Anyone who has "the book problem" knows that there's probably no way they'll ever read every book they own. People who aren't caught up in the urge to acquire more books don't understand us. They think in terms of "you already have lots of books. Why do you want more?" or even "I don't get it. What is it about a book? It's just a lot of words on paper."

So what compels us to collect books? It's simple, really. Books represent stories, new worlds, realms of possibility, knowledge, history. If a person could take everything the words in a book represent and expand them, their house would be so filled with ideas and locations and characters, the building would explode. 

Books are dreams, hopes, experiences. They represent travel to places we can't easily get to ourselves. Tripping through the pages of a book, we can visit the minds and imaginations of other people. And that is pretty wonderful. It's candy to those of us who love books. 

Occasionally I cull my library, trying to get it under control. I donate books to charitable organizations; I remove books from my Kindle. But I don't kid myself. This isn't over. Thank goodness for that. Because as long as reading doesn't prevent me from living, from exploring the real world, it's an awesome thing. It's a gift.

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Now, a question: name a book on your shelf that you found somewhere other than in a store. Answering the question will enter you in the first contest I've run on this site in years. You can only enter once on this post, but I'll have other questions on other posts during the next month (okay, almost a month).

The drawing for a $25 Amazon gift card (there will be 2 winners) will take place on December 22nd. In the meantime, I hope you find a wonderful book to read today!

Happy Reading!

Myrna