Hi, my name is Ziad, and I am a bookaholic.
Like, yeah, addicted to books.
I should be specific, of course. I have been a reader since I first learnt my alphabet, back at the age of 3. (My mother never fails to remind me of the story of how she was told by a pediatrician that Yes, your son is short-sighted, and Yes, you need to teach him his ABCs real quick so that we can get him tested. And that’s why all my toddler photos are of geeky Ziad in too-large glasses.)
So yes, I have been reading for as long as I can remember. And it makes my reading habit even more inevitable that my mother was, for many years, a librarian at a teachers’ training college. My entire childhood has been surrounded by, comforted by, engulfed by, and flooded with books.
But around about the time I had just finished graduating, and started to work, I fell prey to a related, but far more pernicious disease: I became addicted to *buying* books. The constant logic is that Oh, at least I am spending my hard-earned money on Knowledge, rather than frivolous things.
And that is how my books at home kept piling up.
When I moved into my in-laws’, and later on when I moved into our own home, I kept up the habit. Whenever I got depressed, my usual destinations would be McDonald’s, or Kinokuniya. On really bad days, both.
It got to such a ridiculous level that I now have books piled up on bookshelves, by my bedside, on my working desk, and on the floor, flush to the wall near our patio. I have books in the car, books on my working desk. Everywhere. We have started to donate books to charities and non-profit bookstores, but it has hardly made a dent in our ever-growing pile of books.
So, as a New Year’s Resolution for 2023, both Kat and I resolved not to buy any new books for the entire year. The only exception was for books that we could buy if we were travelling overseas. (I have recently discovered a loophole – downloading books on my Kindle! – but I reason to myself that I haven’t broken my resolution since no money is changing hands. Yeah, very Clintonian, I know!)
It helps that I now try to focus my reading via my Kindle, which of course is more portable, and can contain many more books that my bookshelves at home ever could. I miss those moments of “bookbathing” in Kinokuniya, and I still make my way there from time to time, though so far I have been very steadfast with my resolution.
Yes, my name is Ziad, and I am, indeed, a bookaholic.