Biblioholic

             Few days ago, thanks to my friend who canceled our appointment as something urgent came up to her, I could visit my favorite place which I couldn’t for a long time: “book store!” I know that this may sound very strange, but whenever I feel depressed or upset, I head to a bookstore as I can feel relieved and relaxed. I go through the new books first and then move on to the steady seller and lastly go through the books on the shelves. Through experience, I have learned that best seller books are not always “best” sellers. Some of them are listed there with money or the power of the publisher. So I tend to search the shelves carefully to find the hidden “treasure.” And there I found one!

             The title caught my eyes from the top of the shelves. It was a Korean translated version of the book Biblioholism by Tom Raabe. There was a short self check list to see whether one was really addicted to books or not. Briefly ticking through the check boxes and having found out that I was quite a serious “biblioholic,” and also at the same time, feeling relieved that I was not the only person who were a book-addict, I decided to buy the book to find out more about the author and the addiction.

             His story was really interesting. To some point, I was glad that my addiction was not yet as serious as the author’s. He confessed (the title of the Korean version is A Confession of a Biblioholic) that he had lost his girl friend several times because of the books; he went broke more than once through buying books and even more seriously, he actually found out that he had bought a series of same books more than twice. I did or still do buy a lot of books at once and pile it on my desk, but I do read them all, whereas the author had just collected them. This book has somehow helped me to see and feel relieved that being a biblioholic is not all bad and to learn that I should keep the author in mind and try not to develop this addiction further to his stage.