Breaking the Habit

By Stacy Vogel ( Contact )   August 28, 2008 - 7:09 p.m.

One of my bookshelves broke yesterday.

It was my husband's doing. He finally shoved one too many bound comic book collections (they're not graphic novels, darn it!) onto that particular shelf, and down it came. It could just as easily have been me shoving one too many novels onto the shelf, though I suppose novels tend to be lighter than comic collections.

Anyhow, now that bookcase has a huge gap between the bottom shelf and the one above it.

I think my husband and I need to admit we have a problem. We have four bookcases in our home, and even those are getting pretty full. I don't know how many books we can keep buying and storing in the apartment.

I try to take more books out of the library, and every once in a great while, I'll sell a couple of books to a used book store, but they're just so hard to part with. And all too often, I'll have a coupon or find a book on clearance or stumble across one in a used bookstore, and I just have to buy it. My husband calls this a "collector's mentality."

I tell myself it's a fairly benign, and not-too-expensive habit, but pretty soon we're going to have to buy a house just to store our books!

Maybe I should drop off photos of myself at local bookstores and tell them to stop letting me in. Yeah, that'll be the day.

reader COMMENTS (1)
wjbecky
Aug 30, 2008 at 6:09 a.m.
Suggest removal

Hi Stacy! Just think of how your 401k will grow if you put that book money away...

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