Bibliophilic Obsession

Books are akin to jelly beans, potato chips, and Dove chocolates: once you’ve had a taste, you simply cannot stop with one or two. Readers and writers joke despairingly about the height and breadth of their TBR (to be read) piles. Most of us have more than one. There’s the next-to-the-bed TBR, the living room TBR, and the not-yet-piled TBR that resides in several bookcases scattered around the house.

Personally, I favor baskets. Under my glass coffee table live an assortment of baskets with an eclectic collection of books and magazines. Favorites like Schott’s Miscellany and Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, stay there after reading for a quick word snack. The best of the bunch from each Malice Domestic mystery conference live there, too, waiting for the chance to be my next traditional mystery read. An assortment of other fiction and nonfiction titles are stacked in an order that makes sense to me both under and on top of the table.

Then there are the boxes and bags in the basement. More Malice books, treasures from my Mother’s and aunt’s collections, and the odd book of quotations or high school yearbook, all waiting for a new home in that bookcase that lies in neatly stacked pieces with assembly hardware and directions nearby.

So you might say that the last thing I need is to learn about any other books. You could say that my present collection plus the two pages of my Amazon wish list should hold me for a decade or two. You would be wrong.

Every day I receive an email from Garrison Keillor with new-to-me discoveries. A bit of poetry, a bit of history, and facts about authors famous and obscure. The Writer’s Almanac is not a blog but it is a daily read, and that’s close enough for me. When the CNN alerts become too depressing, my Writer’s Almanac is a refuge of sanity.