I admit it. I have a book fetish.

It's terrible. Although I buy books to read, more oftentimes than not, I buy books just to have them. But I am putting a moratorium on purchasing new books until I read the ones I have.

Do you buy books to just have them? Or is it that you can't keep up with all your reading?

Tell me what's on your reading list. Hey, the first step on the road to recovery is admitting you have a problem, right?

-- Brad (brad@scriptbrads.tv), March 12, 2001

Answers

I thought I was pretty bad -- I have about 20 books waiting to be read and probably another 20 or so of books I have just to have... things I meant to read, wanted to "have read" but can't really get into them or am just too mentally lazy to try. Then I joined Dorothy-L, a list for mystery writers/readers (only the digest, though as the damn thing has more than 100 messages a day... and I rarely can read it)... but anyway, one day this past fall they were talking about their "To Be Read" (TBR) stack. Someone brought it up and confessed she had 713 books in her TBR pile. I was stunned. How can you have 713 books you *haven't* read? and keep buying them. But that person was the beginner compared to some of the pros... a few of them listed more than a thousand books and one man listed an entire room -- estimated at more than 3000. Me and my paltry little ol stack of 20 books looked like a total slack job.

-- toni (toni@la-lagniappe.com), March 13, 2001.

You know, I've read what Toni wrote several times. I am so speechless, that it has taken me days to finally say --

Those people are disturbed.

Of course, aren't we all.

But still. THOUSANDS? How do you even remember them?

I tend to buy a few books, then read them. Buy a few more, then read those. My TBR pile rarely has more than five or six books in it. Of course, I'm also known to decide I really don't want to read that after all and ditch it, which keeps the TBR pile more manageable. But mostly, I buy a few and read them, then rush out and buy more.

-- pooks (TexasTrish@aol.com), March 23, 2001.