Biblioholism

I waded through two chapters of Feist’s Silverthorn before I gave up and decided to re-immerse myself in Weiner’s bumper issue of Good in Bed and In Her Shoes, although this time, I reread only the former. Going through Feist’s Magician ate up my appetite for fantasy. And suddenly I don’t find myself very interested in most of the kiddy lit on the shelves either. I’d suddenly developed a craving for chic-lit and found myself trawling the bookshelves for some yummy feminine writing I could devour. Sadly my enthusiasm was sorely dampened by my finicky tastes: the books on the shelf were either too cute, or the subject matter too common or I just didn’t like the name of the title or the author.

And so I ended up with these from Kino:

Dogs of Dreamtime: A Story About Second Chances and the Power of Love by Karen Shanley
I Am a Pencil : A Teacher, His Kids, and Their World of Stories by Sam Swope
Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders by Neil Gaiman

I breezed through I Am A Pencil. Reading about teaching Inner City kids English and what a difficult job teaching really is, reminds me how glad that I am not a teacher. I wouldn’t be a good one. I wouldn’t even be an average one. The greatest contributing factor to this conclusion is that I have no patience, or very little of it.

I have just started on Dogs of Dreamtime. It may be a while before I complete it. Going through books at the rate I do is akin to being a sponge: I absorb the words but the retention rate is minimal. Only a select few remain in my memory. Those that totally blow my mind away are few and far in between but I can count most of these from my kiddy lit category.

I can safely say that I have at least 4 books that I have not touched yet. And still, I’m already thinking of what to buy next. What is it with this obsession for books? Or for owning them? It’s as if I fear that I may run out of books to read. Or that I’ll be stuck somewhere without anything to keep me occupied. I’ve taken my reading a step further by reading in the car at the stop lights or in the jam. It’s a more efficient use of time than getting worked up because I’m only moving two inches as opposed to two meters.

Now if only I could find the space to fit all my books in one location: my house. Now they’re just scattered over at my parents’ as well as a storage location somewhere in Cheras/Kajang, in mothball-filled boxes. I have a feeling I will never see my whole collection in one location; there is just no space.