Confessions of a bookaholic

Okay, I admit it. I have a problem. When my husband Max pointed out that the floor in our so-called guest room (ahem, my library) had begun sagging beneath the weight of (perish the thought) “too many books,” I reluctantly conceded he might have a point. In service of keeping my marriage amicable, I agreed to cull a good portion (meaning as few as possible) of my paperbacks and hardcovers, and promised Max I’d start donating to the library. As we exited the room, the old hardwood floor groaned and shifted under our feet, sending a minor temblor through the stacks, causing a shift and jiggle. I pretended not to notice.

I guess you could say I come by it honestly, this overpowering need to possess every book I’ve ever gotten my hands on, like a dragon with its cache of gold. My grandmother had the same affliction, amassing decades worth of National Geographics and Ellery Queen Mysteries in addition to a lifetime’s steady acquisition of everything from rare first editions and scientific tomes to dime store paperbacks. In later years, her voluminous collection overwhelmed the designated “library” (yet another misnamed guest room), overflowing into the hallway and then the bathroom, eventually taking over the staircase, leaving my tottering grandmother stranded on the ground floor of her house without a bedroom or a bathtub. She staunchly refused to let me clear a pathway on the staircase, accepting the situation as it was. She took great pleasure, she said, in seeing those growing stacks of books and periodicals ascend the stairs, even as she herself could not. Book mania, it seems, runs in the family.

When I think back on it, I realize my own fixation started when I left home, bound for LA at age 19. I boarded a cross-country bus with all my worldly goods crammed in a duffle bag – a few pairs of dungarees, a couple tee shirts and every Kurt Vonnegut book ever written. Also accompanying me on my 3,000-mile trek was a copy of Lenny Bruce’s How to Talk Dirty and Influence People, and Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, both bequeathed to me by my mother with the reminder that, when all else fails, the written word will never let you down. I kept this in mind as I ventured out into the wide world of new experience and colossal screw-ups, keeping those paperbacks close on all my travels. They kept me company through thick and thin, outlasting jobs, cars, a dozen interstate moves and one ill-fated marriage. I found that, unlike lousy jobs, crappy cars and hasty amorous commitments, books remained genuinely good and dependable companions.

With this in mind, I headed to my beloved collection and began the dreaded cull, employing a method of categorization: loved it, liked it and undecided. I filled a single reusable bag with undecided books and headed to the library. There, the nice lady in the used book room perused my donation, smiled and thanked me. I almost made it out of the donation room with an empty bag when something on the “just arrived” shelf caught my eye. Could it be? A Michael Chabon I hadn’t read? I snagged it. It’s just one, I told myself. No one (meaning Max) will ever know. I fished a dollar out of my wallet, but before I could deposit it in the donation box another title caught my attention. A Roddy Doyle I already owned, but here it was in hardcover! Gotta have it. I fished out another dollar. That’s it, I warned myself, but the cookbook section beckoned with a volume on Turkish cuisine and one on Lithuanian pastries! Before I knew it, my empty sack was overflowing. Five bucks well spent. Home I went, vibrating with anticipation.

While my husband was otherwise occupied, I snuck the sack of contraband literature up to the “guest room.” Making myself comfortable on the floor, I rearranged the stacks and piles, placing the newly smuggled volumes discreetly between old familiars. The piles of “loved” and “liked” that I had segregated got reintegrated, arranged in aesthetically pleasing pyramids. The remaining undecided piles sat there, forlorn and isolated, awaiting the donation bag, but I knew I couldn’t do it. Because who knew? Maybe at some point in the future I’d find meaning in them, something cherish-worthy or profound. I slipped them back into the piles of the oldest of the old dog-eared paperbacks, nestled somewhere between those exalted favorites by Lenny Bruce and Shirley Jackson.