My Rediscovered "Vice" - Books

With the exception of the daily news, I have not watched television since Christmas. My DVD collection has remained undisturbed. I have neglected my blogs, the number of undeleted junkmail in my inbox grew, and my memory card is full of photos that have yet to be transferred to the computer, let alone edited. I have reverted from baking time-consuming, complex cakes and pies to quick and easy muffins and cookies. At fault is my passion for reading, which rekindled once my youngest learnt to sleep the whole night through.

I have always been a bookworm. Whilst other children snuck money from their parents to buy candy and toys at the local convenience store, I snuck money away from my lola (grandmother) to buy books from the book fair. Receiving my first library card at six years of age felt much more liberating than getting my driver’s permit at 18. Even after my mother profusely blamed my sudden need for eyeglasses when I was eleven with my nightly routine of reading for hours with the assistance of a measly 25 watt bedside lamp, I never stopped flipping those pages and devouring the words. Never mind shoes and handbags – the bookstore is the most dangerous threat to my wallet.
NB - This also happens to be a trait shared by hubby and his mother, who alone has over 3000 books and, whilst house-hunting, had to have specialists assess if the structure of the prospective new home was strong enough to support the weight. Throwing away/selling our books is unheard of in our family. In my opinion, owning a book possesses a certain seductive quality that owning, say, a Kate Spade handbag does not.

Oftentimes I found myself with a growing pile of unread books that I picked up on the sale tables of Dussmann and Hugendubel (or Chapters and Indigo if I happened to be in Canada), which resulted in a recurring New Year’s resolution to read them all before buying more. 2008 was the first year that I followed this through, which probably explains the number of books I received from hubby and his mom last Christmas.

Within the next month I had already devoured all four of them, plus one of the books that hubby received from his mom. (It may not seem like that many, but I read much more slowly in German.) On the next available opportunity hubby I packed up the kids and went on my first visit to Dussmann in months, where we made a lovely discovery – a riveting, growing book series that covers very nearly everything from Anarchism to The Meaning of Life to Wittgenstein: Very Short Introductions from Oxford University Press. I fear that I will find it impossible to restrain my purchases until I own the complete series!

Another recent discovery of mine is shelfari.com, a website that combines the social networking of facebook with the concept of the book/reading club. My initial attraction to the website occurred during my search for a library-like widget for this blog. A nice spillover effect from joining this site is that it enables me to be genuinely surprised on my birthday again. By compiling and maintaining an online wishlist, I need never be pestered about my birthday/Easter/Christmas wishes again (I hate dictating to people what I want to receive, which is especially tiresome in a family that refuses to give gift certificates on principle).