Joie de livre

Let me tell you about my little book problem.

I can’t resist books. I also can’t seem to finish them. No, wait, that’s not true. I do finish books, but the time it takes me to finish them far outstrips the degree of enthusiasm I experience at the time I take them out of the library, or, *gasp*, bought them.

I try to be realistic about my habits. I try to buy only books that I “need” and that I know I will get around to reading sooner or later. And I’ve been pretty good about it for a long time. I can pat myself on the back for my moderation. The actual reading of a book, however, is the true challenge. One must make time for reading, and I am bad about that. I am distractible and restless. And when I’m tired, as I often am, I am both, to a heightened degree. Sometimes I need “Family Guy” more than I need James Alison.

Book binging is not the biggest problem in the world. But it’s a bit embarrassing. You’d think I was a voracious reader and vastly learned. I certainly don’t feel as if I am. I just “get on to a lot of things,” as one does. That is, I get an idea in my head that I NEED to explore. Or I hear about a writer (on the radio, at a blog, from an acquaintance) about whom I simply MUST inform myself, and off I go to the New York Public Library to snap the desired tome that will lift me to a better plane of existence from the system reserves or… *frisson*, immediate checkout.

For your information, I am not much of a fiction reader. I pick away almost exclusively at non-fiction. I am not proud of this, but I must follow my heart where it leads. I have worse flaws.

Lunchtime often leads me to one of NYPL’s nearby, central midtown branches. The Mid-Manhattan and Donnell branches are equidistant from the Death Star -- I mean my office -- and they are public treasures of the first order. I never thought I would be glad to spend so much time in places of such architectural dinginess and grim, bare-bones civic atmosphere as these public library branches. But I walk to the library with the excitement of a pilgrim approaching Santiago de Compostela. Each and every time.

And it’s free.

But at times the library fails me. My interests are particular and the books I want sometimes verge on the arcane. The library is not always equal to my greed. In such instances I pay a call to my secret paramours, the second-hand bookshops. I am not afraid of them. Most are better organized and less dusty than their detractors believe. I found quite a few good ones in the University of Chicago area when I was there two weeks ago. But New York has one or two shops at which one need not sneeze (I did mention these stores are not dusty). The Strand, for instance. A gold mine, take my word for it. And the venerable, historic Gotham Book Mart, one block’s walk, as luck would have it, from the Death Star.

I can exercise restraint, and I do. I do not sacrifice my rent money to second-hand books. Just my time. You would be dismayed by the growing stack of reading on the hallway shelf in my apartment. It’s blocking the daylight from the windows.

Today’s posting is brought to you by Guilt. Guilt: haunting America’s bloggers, from coast to coast, who fail to post for months at a time, who then resort to writing anything, just ANYTHING, when the mood hits. Like me. And you!