mark o'brien

I now know (thanks to my kind daughter, Amy), that I have a serious problem… (I suspect Baggas has a similar problem, judging from the number of Amazon boxes I spied in his surgery…)

—

You know you’re a bookaholic when…

You walk into someone’s house and you have to check the impulse to ignore them and immediately begin scoping out their bookshelves. A corollary: You walk into a house with no visible reading material anywhere and you immediately get nervous.

You reject purses because their book-holding potential is low.

You choose the exercise bike (or elliptical) over other nominally more appealing forms of exercise, because it offers the opportunity to read.

You’re stressed out on vacation because there are too many people around (extended family) and they won’t leave you alone to read.

You feel naked if you don’t bring a book to some social event (baseball game, dinner with friends, church, jury duty).

You get irritated with your spouse or family member when they want to talk to you and you’re right in the middle of a particularly good part of the book you’re reading.

You feel the need to ask those who say they don’t like reading “Don’t you get bored?”

You’ve memorized your library card number from always typing it in online to request a book.

The librarian at the branch library you go to recognizes you and knows what books you like to read.

You take two books with you on a 5-day trip and return with thirteen.

You read books as you are walking to school and keep running into trees because you veer off the sidewalk.

You must attend a relative’s graduation and are asked to stake out seats at least an hour beforehand, and you do this only under the assumption that you can bring a book.

As a child, your parents tell you that bringing a book to the table is anti-social (unless they’re bookaholics too, in which case, they’re reading at table too.)

You never pass by a used bookstore without stopping in.

You get in trouble at school for reading too much.

You keep a book on the passenger seat for stoplights. (DUH)

You read books in movie theatres instead of watching the movie (or try to anyway).

You still had a nightlight at age 12 just so you could read. And your mother knew. And she didn’t say anything because she did it too.

You’re glad for the chance to eat out alone, so you can read

You start collecting books for your kids … at least a decade before you actually procreate.

You arrive everywhere early, just for the extra time to squeeze in some reading.

You sometimes pick up books just to smell them.

You’d really like to have a party where everyone invited brings his/her book. You’d all say hello, get something to drink or eat, and then read!

You can remember where all the bookshops ought to be in a town you last visited a decade ago

The guys from the moving company who are going to be helping you move from your apartment revise their estimate upward considerably after they get a look at your bookshelves and boxes of books. (Ouch!)

You seriously consider never moving again in your lifetime, because you remember so vividly the chore that it was to move all your books and then re-shelve them.

When renovating your house, you put built-in bookshelves or room for bookcases in almost every room (the only room spared was the bath, and that only because humidity isn’t good for the paper).

You wouldn’t think there was any reason to seek a cure, and even if you did, it would involve buying a book

Visitors often ask “Have you read all of those?”

You sneak off with your glass of wine, from a family gathering/dinner/barbeque or party being thrown at your own home to read 10 or 15 minutes in your bedroom while everyone probably assumes you’re in the bathroom.

Clerks in 3 huge bookstores seem to know you on sight…in and out of the store.

Also, people behind you in line at your biweekly trip to the bookstore (or library) look at your pile of books and say things like “I don’t think that I have even read that many books in my entire life!”

When you are preparing to go on holiday, you spend more time choosing books than packing your clothes [and books take up more suitcase space than your shoes and clothes].