Completing a Book

I can’t tell you how excited I get when I finish a book. Well maybe excited isn’t the right word, but definitely happier than I was while reading the last page. Why am I happy? Because I get to choose another book. Sometimes I feel like the current book I am reading, even if it is really good, is holding me back from all of the other books that I have still yet to read. This often times leads to three or four books on my nightstand, because some nights my new book curiosity wins out over my desire to finish the existing book. This is not something I would recommend.

Addiction Update

It has been a few weeks since my last post about my addiction to books, and more specifically bookstores.  So it seemed like a good time for an update.  I have been inside a bookstore twice since that post, once to get Borders gift cards for my nephews and nieces (which will lead to four more bookstore visits, maybe that wasn’t such a good gift idea…), and a visit to Barnes & Noble just today as I received a gift card from my mother-in-law yesterday for Christmas.  It’s kind of sad that I couldn’t even wait 24 hours to figure out a way to sneak down to the bookstore to unload this vice from my wallet.  I wish I would have waited a little bit longer, because it was nice to dream about which books I was going to get. But the hole burning in my wallet was much too hot, so I offered to go to the grocery store which was within “sneaking distance” of B&N.  Once I got there I knew I had to make it quick, so I bee lined straight for my favorite sections and walked out of their with the Arthur Schlesinger Journals, The Rest is Noise, and The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (which I just now found out is being made into a movie starring Leo DiCaprio as Roosevelt).

Dealing With Addiction

I suppose if you are going to have an addiction there are more destructive ones than being addicted to books.  The main problem with this addiction is that I also like to purchase and own the books as well.  Checking them out at the library only to have to return them later has never appealed to me, as that doesn’t grow my own personal collection.  Or my “bookstore”, as my wife calls it.

I have many varied interests, and I never know which I might be in the mood for at any given time.   So often I will spend time in front of my bookstore until one pops out at me, and then I pick it up to begin reading.  This most often occurs before I am about to use the bathroom, or as my wife would say, my “office”.  This is due to the fact that I can’t go to the bathroom without a book in tow.  Call it obsessive compulsive, or just plain weird, but my books are primarily read inside the john.  I have a hunch that I am not the only guy out there that suffers from this affliction.

If you don’t have a fairly substantial personal collection to choose from it makes this experience a lot less fulfilling, so this is why the public library system just doesn’t work for me.  It also is why the bookstore is my local “hole in the wall”.  If time was no object, and I didn’t have a wife and child to tend to, I could quite literally spend a whole day in a bookstore.  And not just a day here and there, but every single day of the week.  I know where all of the bookstores within a 25 mile radius of my house are, how long it could take me to get to each one if  I left the house right now, which ones sell used books, which ones have stations where you can look up your own books, which ones always ask me whether I have a “rewards” card, and where the non-fiction sections are located in each one.  I know more intimate details than that but I would like it if you kept reading, so I don’t want to make you think I am some sort of freak.

This blog is an attempt to address this addiction.  To begin to focus on reading the books I have, rather than going to look for new ones.  If I didn’t buy another book starting today, I have guesstimated at my pace it would take me roughly three and a half years to read all of the books I own but haven’t read.  Or to complete the ones that I have started but never finished.  So the remaining posts will focus on three major themes, 1) Reflections on the book I am reading at that moment in time, 2) How my addiction is coming along, and 3) What my experiences are with being a stay-at-home dad.

I hope you will enjoy, and I hope you will join in on the conversation.