Saturday, November 10, 2007

Are you a biblioholic?

Have you ever bought the same book twice without knowing it?
Do you have several books on an obscure topic that you haven't read?
Is the first thing you do when you get interested in a subject is to rush out and buy 6-7 books on it?
Have you ever been reprimanded or fired for reading on the job?
Have you ever purchased or rented additional living space just for your books?


These are some of the 25 danger signs that you may be a biblioholic. In this tenth-anniversary edition of the much-loved Biblioholism: The Literary Addiction, author Tom Raabe takes a humorous look at the all-consuming love of books and has updated the information within by discussing the ever-mutating new E-landscape and its effects on fellow biblioholics everywhere.

If you answer "yes" to any or all of these questions, don't worry. You are not alone. Your complete recovery awaits you-just buy one more book!

Biblioholism by Tom Raabe

But I dont want to recover. I want to be "among the gently mad"
My answers are Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes.

Yes I have been reprimanded and fired for reading on the job. My very first job way back when I was in high school (we're talking over 25 years ago here), I was working as an assistant to a seniors home and I used to work there 3 afternoons a week. They used to have a huge bin filled with books sitting in a small alcove, and when I was tired, bored or had nothing to do, I would go and sit in this alcove and read. The matron reprimanded me a few times. After I had been there for 18 months, I was getting bored with the job, and when she found me reading yet again, she said to me, "I dont think you should work here anymore". I agreed. So I stopped.

But eventually that was balanced with a 5 year stint working in a Media Monitoring job (aka press clippings), where I got paid to read newspapers & magazines.

1 comment:

Chris said...

Great post! I love that the cure for my "disease" of biblioholism is to indulge my symptoms and buy another book! How did I get so lucky? I hadn't heard of this book. Now I shall have to get it.