My heart is pounding. My biceps quiver. I can't catch my breath. Oy.
Have I mentioned that I suffer from chronic bibliomania? I know I'm not alone in the compulsion to read but sometimes I wonder about my particular version. Perhaps it should be termed more negatively. Not so much an obsession with books as an aversion to, a fear and loathing of, being without them. Abibliophobia or something of the sort. A mortal dread of being stuck without a book (or 20 or 30).
I sit here waiting for my heart to slow down because I just came from the university library. It's only two short blocks from my office, but I barely made it carrying 10 hardcover books. Why was I carrying 10 books? Because I'm about to have a few days off and succumbed to my usual panic about not having enough books to read, or, really, to choose among. So I checked my to-read list--have I mentioned that I carry with me at all times a crazily scribbled and constantly updated list of books I want to read? You know, just in case I run into Santa on the street?--and I checked online for what was available at the library and I went and took them out. I'm very happy that almost none of them has ever been checked out before, which means they'll all be pristine and fully readable; so many times I've taken out books only to be horrified at how thoroughly the students have marked them up and ruined them.
So. Now all I have to do is shlep them on the subway and the long walk from the subway. To my home--where I already have towering to-read piles, so it's not as though I would have had no alternatives if I hadn't checked these out. Still. I am a person with certain needs. Ever replenished reading options prime among them. The craving is soothed. Calm descends. Pages await.
