When you can’t stop buying books
I have a lot of unread books. They are stuffed on shelves, teeter on a pile on the floor by my bed and also stand in a very high pile on my bedside table. In fact, the To Be Read pile has been noticed a few times by friends on zoom calls when I’m sitting up in bed.
‘That’s a lot,’ they say. ‘What if they fall on you in the middle of the night?’ I shrug. There are worse ways to go.
I don’t consider myself particularly materialistic, but books are my weakness. ‘You should read them all before buying any more,’ a friend once said. ‘Every single one of them.’ Yeah. That’s not going to happen.
Choosing more
At Christmas my father-in-law gave me a very generous book token. I’ve been looking at it most days now, making lists of what to buy. I’ll do it when I’ve hit my work deadline I tell myself. It’ll be a lovely incentive when I finish this draft. Guess what I did yesterday? Yep, spent all of it. And it made me so happy. I’m not reading any of the books I bought till I get a week off (in a month, once that work has been completed). But instead of shoving them on a shelf, I’ve left them on the armchair as a sort of visual reminder of what’s in store. And have stroked a couple of them every now and then (is that weird?). And I’ve sent a couple of pictures to other book-addled friends.
Why books matter to me
So why the obsession with owning books? Growing up we didn’t have much. My parents had a few Greek books – maybe a shelf of them, if that. But there weren’t any English books in the house, so I used the library a lot. I couldn’t believe I was allowed to walk out with twelve (twelve) books and bring them home.
Once I was about ten and received pocket money each week (the grand sum of 25p), I would go to WHSmith’s in the Elephant & Castle shopping centre and buy whichever Agatha Christie paperback had the most lurid cover (yes, you could buy one for that amount). I loved owning the book – having it all to myself, knowing I didn’t have to give it back. I started a collection – a mini-library of my own. I would spend a lot of time rearranging my books and read them all several times. It was a special library. Only books about death and ponies were allowed. Fair enough.
Giving them away
Now once I’ve read a book I’ll happily give it to a friend or a charity shop. I don’t want to keep a read book unless I’m going to read it again, use it for work or it’s been signed by the author. And, of course, I don’t have the space.
And the unread piles? I don’t feel any guilt about the ones I’m yet to get to – and I know some of them will probably stay unread for months, maybe years. If you have lots of books and feel bad about not reading them, I suggest you just look at them as friends that you’re collecting for the future. And you can’t have too many of those can you?
How may unread books do you think you have?
How do you organise them? Or are they scattered everywhere?
Feel guilty about more books or does it make you happy?
I’d love to know, so do leave a comment below.