Tuesday, December 9, 2008

I think I need a 12 step progam...

I have a problem. I've been told that the first step is admitting it, so here it goes.

While some women have an unnatural addiction to shoes or purses, this one has a very different addiction. Even though I do love my shoes and my purses, I don’t have the same problem walking out of the store empty handed or logging off of Amazon without exercising my credit card. What is this uncontrollable addiction?

Books.

Yeah, you read it right. Books. I have a very tough time going into Barnes and Noble and not buying something. Even if I go in with the intention of not buying anything or just picking up this month's In Style, I always walk out with at least one book I hadn’t planned on buying. I work across the street from a $1 bookstore (yeah, everything is ONE DOLLAR!!!!!), which I can no longer allow myself to go into because I end up spending 3 hours and $20. Which, at Barnes and Noble wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but at the $1 bookstore, that’s 20 books.

The problem is that I just find so many things interesting to read. I can go from reading short stories about people in all different kinds of love to reading about the slave trade to reading about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to reading Twilight and falling in love alongside Bella all over again. There is no end to worlds I can enter and the things I can learn about. It just shows how far the human mind can stretch, which fascinates me to no end.

Would you like to know how I discovered that I truly have a problem? Or at least how I realized that this problem has become more of an obsession?

Well I opened today, which sucks because I have to be up at 3:45 am to be at work at 4:45 am. Usually, when I open on Mondays, I grab a Sunday NY Times because I want to read the book reviews but refuse to spend $5 on a newspaper that I’m sure I can find online if I really looked. So I had my paper and sat down for my lunch. Today was the “Holiday Book Special” which included “100 Notable Books of 2008.” I’m a total sucker for these kinds of lists. I like recommendations and where better to get the best recommendation than the NY Times? Anyway, so I’m reading this section and see a ton of books I want to read and I see a highlighter just calling my name. I pick it up and proceed to highlight the books that I want to read. That’s no all.

After spending 2 hours at the mall Christmas shopping with Chad, which was 2 hours of “We’re not shopping for you, Chad” and “What would you’re parents like?” and “Well I don’t really know what you should get your mom if you keep vetoing everything I suggest,” I come home and look over my list. Then I go on Amazon and read the descriptions of almost all the books on my list to make sure they are really something I would like and get through. Then, I added all of them to a spreadsheet I have of all the books I want to read someday. Yeah, I have a spreadsheet of all the books I want to read someday. That’s how serious I am.

The thing about having a list like this is that I never actually follow it. I’ll go to a bookstore or the library and find something that strikes me right now and I’ll get that instead. It’s like never going to the supermarket hungry because you end up with a bunch of stuff you don’t need. The problem with me is, there is never an end to the hunger. No matter how may books
I have on my shelf that have gone unread because of my slight ADD tendencies, I don’t quit want to buy books.

I think the other reason I buy certain books at certain times is because, just like some people are in the mood for a certain type of movie because they feel like something funny or action-packed or mindless, that’s how I feel when I go into Barnes and Noble. If I feel like something mindless, then I pick up Twilight. If I feel like something romantic I go straight for the Jane Austen. You get the picture.

I guess it is better than spending $500 on some bag that I’ll wear out by, oh yeah, putting too many books into! So I guess that’s one for the “healthy” column.

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