Recognizing you have a problem is the first step…..or something.

I’ve mentioned before about my book buying compulsions. I have a problem. I know. My house is overrun with books.

Books I’ve read. Books I mean to read. Books I’ve adored since childhood. Books friends have written. Favorite books in which I’ve tracked down first additions. Some books I’ve read so many times they are literally falling apart. I just lovingly piece them back together and tuck them back in the shelves when I’m done with them again.

I have a first edition of Lonesome Dove that I’m going to get Larry McMurtry to sign one of these days. He lives in my same town, but I haven’t managed to locate him yet. Admittedly, I haven’t really applied myself to the search yet, but I will eventually.

I have a copy of The Princess Bride that I’d kill to have autographed by William Goldman but he lives in NYC and I understand he’s quite hard to get.

None of that is the point of this blog. Boy, I do love to ramble.

Anyway….We’ve been doing some remodeling in the house which prompted me to do a major reorganization of my primary bookshelves. Once upon a time they were all organized in an Amylynn Dewey Decimal System wherein the rules are all stored safely in my head. Since I have complete knowledge of the system, I was able to put my hand directly on the spine of any book I wanted.

That was BC. Before Children. They came along and started touching everything. Nothing has been the same since.

The “to go” pile

Still, I reorganized them with the goal of thinning out the library a bit.

I was ruthless. I got rid of almost my entire Stephen King collection, keeping only my favorites. Gone, too, went the John Grisham books and most of the Anne Rice’s. Scads and scads of books.

I was really proud of myself. It was a huge, teetering pile. Then, as I looked at my discards, I also noticed there were still full bookcases. If you didn’t see the evidence of the give-away pile on the floor, you’d still say I have too many

Packed up with the help of my new assistant

books.

It’s time to get a sponsor and join a twelve step program.

I packed up all the books in old Target bags and loaded them in the back of my SUV. Sassy and I took them to the huge used book dealer in town. Forty-five minutes later, they’d sorted through the piles and selected a piddly pile of my books. They offered me a total of 130.00 in store credit.

Which, of course, only fuels my addiction.

And now I have the rather bizarre problem of having bags and bags of rejected books I don’t want to take back into my house that I don’t know what to do with.

For me, that is almost unfathomable.

What is your favorite book? Do you have any signed by authors you’re especially fond of? What do you collect that has begun to take over your life?