B
is for Books
I’m
not addicted to alcohol or drugs or chocolate, but I am addicted to reading.
And since I have that addiction, I have far too many books. I must confess that
I hardly ever hesitate to buy an interesting book that a friend recommends or
that I see on Goodreads or that pops up in my email, causing my credit card to
almost always never get below $700. Don’t get me wrong. Not all of that debt is
because of my carelessly purchasing books. Much of it is for Christmas “giffs”
for family.
I
almost always have three or four books going at the same time: one for reading
in bed, one for reading when the TV is on, and a couple of more that are
started but read only occasionally. Needless to say, it takes me longer to read
these than the others.
I
belong to an online book club – the Modern Mrs Darcy Book Club – and Anne
Bogel, the creator of the book club, suggests a gazillion books every week,
with one book, plus the “flight” books (books that are related to the theme of
the month’s selection), “assigned” every month. At the end of the month, we
have a webinar on the month’s selection, sometimes with the author joining in
on the webinar. Usually the webinar lasts for an hour, but sometimes our chatty
leader goes over. I have no idea how I found this online club, but I’m happy
that I did.
Just
this morning (May 14, 2019) we had a webinar in which Anne talked about the
books that she has put on the Summer Reading Guide . . . thirty books that she
suggests that we read. She’ll send the list to us via email, but I took down
the titles of about ten of them and immediately added them to my Goodreads
“Want to Read” list. I think I have thirty or so books on that list. My problem
is that I don’t have the funds to order or even to buy at Book Mountain, my
favorite used bookstore. It seems as though a book from Amazon comes almost
every day, adding to my credit card total. As I said earlier, I’m addicted to
reading!
I
have no idea how many books Frank and I have. Maybe I’ll count someday, but not
right now. In my office, I have them sort of divided into categories: old books
from teaching and sales repping, books on writing, books that friends and
relatives have written, those on grief (mainly about losing children, of
course), those that I’ve read this year (nineteen as of today) and in years
past, books that I want to read. In our bedroom and in the guest room, I have
bookshelves with the volumes divided by authors. We love to read authors who
have written lots of books, trying to read all of them . . . authors like David
Baldacci, Lee Child, Vince Sparks, Harlen Coben, Mary Higgins Clark, Ken
Follett, and many more. Both Frank and I are readers, and the good thing is
that we usually like the same books.
Before
I close on BOOKS, I’ll have to tell you a secret. I read so many books and my
poor old brain is getting so old that I can rarely tell you much about books
after about a week. Isn’t that sad? I’m really thankful that I finally learned
how to use Goodreads because now I can keep up with what I’ve read and remember
a little bit about the books because I write a blurb about them when I finish.
So here are my bookcases. Not a very neat librarian, I'm afraid! But you can see how much I love books. And so does Frank!
This is what I WISH my library looked like:
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