Are you a book slut?

Read this hilarious entry on Emily Barton's blog at Telecommuter Talk: http://emilybarton.blogspot.com/2008/03/1-book-slut.html

I have to admit, I qualify! I have partly read books by my bed, on the shelves, stacked in the kitchen (to read when I'm eating). I usually carry a book with me (these days, busing to work is the usual way I get anything read!), and as you can see from my 'currently reading list', I have several books on the go. I have to be actively reading a book - at least dipping into it regularly (and boy, doesn't that have connotations!) - before it qualifies for going onto my 'currently reading' pile. If I haven't finished a book within a few days, it's usually a sign I'm just 'not that into it' right now (hee hee), and it goes back onto the pile and I start speed-flipping other books to see what I am in the mood for (ha ha).

Yes, I am a book slut..... I am faithful to those books I love and cherish, but I'm always on the lookout for a new book to sweep me off my feet! I have loved books and lost them - Forty Words for Sorrow - by Giles Blunt, where are you? I know I had it, but I can't find it anymore on my shelves. All of my old Anne of Green Gables books, Trixie Belden, Little House on the Prairie, where are you? I'm buying new versions now. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich(sp) is the only book I have ever left on the bus by accident. At least I had finished it before I forgot it! but it haunts me as the book that got away. And that was over 20 years ago! I've never lost another that way, either, and I still go everywhere by bus. That is the book that got away, that I left behind.

Then there are the library books - those books bought by other people and unavailable now because they are out of print - Fantastic Owls, which is also one I want to buy for a dear friend; so many cookbooks, history books, books of interest that are not available anywhere else now - how they tease me so, I can look, I can even touch, but I can't have!!!!! Like a courtly kiss from a lady, a handkerchief given as a favor........

And other people's book shelves. I love looking to see what other people have. What do they read? Are their books proudly displayed? Or hidden away shamefully? Do they have secret places they hide books? Books say so much about a person, I think, their interests, how they view the world, what they love. Sometimes, I am ashamed to confess, I have book envy, especially if their books are properly arranged by category (and then alphabetical) and their shelves are neat......I am guilty of touching books without permission (though I usually ask eventually!) and of always, finding something to borrow, though I will only borrow from a good friend - that is like lending a piece of your heart, to lend a book, so I treat other people's books like their precious bits of soul lent to me. So I do it rarely now. I usually write down the information on my ever-present 'books I want next' list (several pages long now), and regretfully put back the owner's book, not without a surreptious stroke and last longing glance.......yep, that's me, book slut.

Are you one too?