Hi. My name's Kim, and I'm a bookaholic.
I've always loved reading. I love reading. It's something my parents (especially my mother) instilled in me early on. As a matter of fact, I was reading (well) by age 5. Which wouldn't have been an issue, if only the rest of my class hadn't been just learning their letters. But, as it turns out, I was so far ahead, and the schools so reluctant to cooperate (one teacher went as far as to tell my parents not to allow me to read anything, even a box of cereal, so that the rest of the class could catch up to me) that my parents decided to pull me out of the public school system and begin what turned into eight years of homeschooling me.
I've read more books than I could list. I firmly believe a person can never own too many books (unless they start piling up around the room). I love all books. You name it, I'll read it. My bookshelf holds everything from Popular Religions of the World to the Harry Potter series to a multitude of Stephen King books to financial advice books to trashy romance novels. And that's not counting all the books I have in storage and the ones on my wish list.
I'm constantly on the lookout for a new good book, and I'm always picking up things to read. My desk holds more old Cosmos and school newspapers and Advocates than I care to count, because I have such a hard time throwing away good reading material, even if I've memorized it cover to cover. My class had a library introduction a couple weeks ago, and I literally stopped in my tracks on the way out of the campus library because I spotted a rack full of magazines they were giving away. I frequent a library near my house because they have a room full of free books just waiting to be brought home and placed on my bookshelf. I've had to resist going into used bookstores when I haven't specifically set aside money specifically for buying books, because I'll happily spend my food budget on books and just eat Ramen and macaroni and cheese instead.
I never really thought it was an issue. In fact, I've always loved that part of myself - the side of me that is more than content to sit in front of my parents' wood-burning stove with a good book and just read all afternoon. I love throwing a blanket over the picnic table and laying in the sun reading a well-worn and much-loved book. I don't fully understand, but thoroughly enjoy the fact that one of the things that calms me the most is to just bury my face in the binding between the pages of a book. I love that, for however long or short I read, I am transported to another place. To another world or another time, where vivid pictures of people and places dance through my mind.
Knowing all this, it's no surprise that I often spend time at friends' houses standing in front of their bookshelves. I look at every book. Every title. Every author. Sometimes, I leave with a few of their books, anxiously borrowed in anticipation of an afternoon (or, let's face it, a night) spent lost in a new adventure.
Today, I was walking through the halls at school, in the extra 45 minutes between when I finished my geography test and when the lecture part of the class started. I walked past an older gentleman sitting in a chair reading a book. I have no idea what book it was. There was no jacket, and the cover was one of those generic dark materials that adorns hardcover books. As I walked past him, I was suddenly struck with this unbelievable urge to snatch the book from his hands and take it home to read it myself.
Let me repeat that, for any of you who may have missed what I just said.
I almost walked up to an elderly man whom I've never met and snatched from his hands a completely unknown book, simply so I could take it home and read it myself.
What kind of person am I!?!?!?
And as if that wasn't bad enough, I noticed a box set up in the hallway for students to donate textbooks (and probably other books) to be donated to people who don't have/can't afford books, and to help literacy. And I had to remind myself that I didn't fit that particular "needy" category.
...I think I have a problem...
