There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it (Bertrand Russell).

What excuse except madness?

Two, three, sometimes four books acquired every weekend and not second-hand/bargain-priced or on-sale ones at that, but NEW ones, books still heavy with that fresh-off-the-box, fresh-off-the-press smell, the one (smell) that I secretly like burying my nose in because it reminds me of my youth, my early introduction to bookstores and libraries, the rainy days spent curled in bed when school was cancelled, and the summers when life itself acquired a languid, almost slow-as-molasses pace and the days seemed to stretch to forever. Ah, to have books to smell and to hold! Reading, after all, is as much a sensual and tactile activity as it is an interior/intellectual one, which is why I can never comprehend people who read books online. What is the point of reading a book if you can’t take it to bed? 

***

The problem with me is that I do a lot of buying, but not enough reading (I remember a friend, who shares this same affliction, admonishing me to buy him a DVD instead of a book for his birthday because his reading backlog, he said, “has become serious enough to be embarrassing”). And, of course, with the constant buying comes the cursed drain to the pocketbook and the niggling tug at the conscience, when the sensible other self tries to shame me into some degree of responsibility with admonitions like: “Do you really need another one of these?” Addict that I am, I often rationalize or counter-argue these situations away by snarling at this other self with, “Of course, goddammit, I need to buy the sequel to P. Neruda’s Memoirs because I will die if I don’t. Die, do you hear me?! The damn things read like poetry I tell you. They're sheer genius!”

In the meantime, books pile up. Some still in shrink wraps; some, believe it or not, are more than a decade old and languishing inside old boxes, their spines unwrinkled.

***

In the newest Twisted series by J. Zafra (Twisted 8: The Night of the Living Twisted, which is brilliant, by the way, with Zafra back in good form, although much can be said about the sloppy proofreading), the author posed a question to fellow biblioholics: “Do (we) buy books out of a pure love of books, or is it just avarice? . . . Is it really reading (we) love—or shopping?”

No serious bibliophile will admit to the latter. To buy books to be savored immediately . . . or later . . . (or never) is immaterial. I think that primarily we buy books out of a desire (for pleasure). The buying in itself appeases this desire. The reading lengthens the pleasure. And sometimes if a book is very good, the pleasure stays with us for a long, long time even after the book has been read to conclusion.

Some books, like good sex, linger. We simply sigh and stretch in bed after we've finished and marvel at how good they've been.