Books! Books! Everywhere, Books!

Have you ever read the beginning of Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler? Calvino begins this story with a character who loves books; he loves the feel of them, the smell of them, the words in them, and most importantly the stories and ideas in them. After purchasing a new book, he opens the front to see the title page. He looks at the cover and then turns it over to look at the back. He literally caresses that new book! When I first read this opening passage, I felt an overwhelming sense of familiarity ... that character could be me.

I wrote a poem based on this bit of book love by Calvino. I called it "Book Lust." I know, I know ... Nancy Pearl used this phrase as the title of one of her books. But I wrote the poem long before Book Lust was published. Ms. Pearl was just more motivated than I was, at the time, to put her work out there for the world to see. Sniff.

So how serious is my book lust? Well, for starters I've got 849 titles listed in my LibraryThing.com catalog and this is just the tip of it. I still have "a number" of books in storage that need to be entered into my catalog. To be fair, not all of these tomes are mine. Mr. Distortion is quite a reader too and he is not immune to the siren call of books.

The extent of my book lust was brought home to me last night when I took a trip to Borders Books. With birthday gift certificate in hand, I went skipping into the bookstore. Well, I didn't actually skip, but I wanted to ... and I was skipping in my head. I had a list of desired titles and began my search:

The Complete Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales? Nope, but Borders said they could order it for me and have it in 7 days. Hmmph. Want. Book. Now.

A Graveyard for Lunatics: Another Tale of Two Cities by Ray Bradbury? Nope, but there were about 25 copies of Fahrenheit 451 waiting for someone to love them.

Something Rotten (Thursday Next Novels) by Jasper Fforde? Nope, but they had the other 2 titles in this series that I already own.

The Cambridge Companion to T.S. Eliot by A. David Moody (ed.)? Nope, the computer said it was "in store" but appeared to be lost misshelved.

Anyway, you get the idea. I decided that I might have more success if I just browsed the shelves. Certainly I would serendipitously come across a title that I really-really-wanted and had failed to put on my list. Browsing, I was a bit surprised at the number of books that I'd either read or already own, but I valiantly forged ahead with occasional sighs and "hmmms" to renew my determination. Eventually those sighs must have alerted the sales staff that they had a reader-in-distress in their midst, and a very nice saleslady asked if she could help me find anything. Before I had given careful thought to my answer I heard the following words come out of my mouth: "I think I have everything in the store already." The saleslady just stared. Probably hadn't heard that one before. So I added, "But thanks anyway," just to be social. Geesh! What IS my problem??

I finally came home with Friends, Lovers, Chocolate by Alexander McCall Smith. Finding this book was no easy task since bookstores are never sure where to shelve it. Does it get shelved in Mysteries or Fiction/Literature? Does it get shelved with the M's for McCall or the S's for Smith? Just for the record, I found Alexander McCall Smith's books in all of the aforementioned areas.

I must say that this has been a good birthday. Friends and relatives have fed my insatiable book lust with nary a hint of forthcoming intervention. What is that I hear you asking? The rest of the booty?

I submit Birthday Gifts 2006:

I Am a Cat: Three Volumes in One by Soseki Natsume

Shakespeare Cats by Susan Herbert

Why I Write by George Orwell

The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by G.K. Chesterton

The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith

On the Beach by Nevil Shute

The Scar by China Mieville

Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose

Now to find those hours upon hours to read - ay, there's the rub.