Confessions of a Book Collector

by Janis Susan May/Janis Patterson

Somehow - no one is quite sure how - I learned to read before turning three. My parents found out by accident, for no one taught me. I wrote my first 'book' when I was four. It was a deathless tale of some children playing in a park who captured an escaped lion - yes, I had a melodramatic turn of mind even then - before going home for supper. There were about a dozen copies as I remember, each hand-printed and illustrated on white typing paper taken from my father's desk and lovingly signature sewn - Daddy had told me that was the best kind of binding - with white cotton thread begged from my mother. I think there may still be a copy or two extant buried somewhere in my mother's papers.

I was very fortunate. I was raised by parents who loved books and revered the English language. We played word games as much as board games in those antique, pre-TV times. I was rewarded when I mastered some esoteric form of wordcraft, such as tracing a Greek root word through several English incarnations. I could hardly wait to begin school where I could indulge in such linguistic and literate pleasures all day long instead of having to wait until my parents had the time.

School was an incredible disappointment. Somehow being stuck in a room with a bunch of children who could not even read Dick and Jane (no advanced classes in those days!) was on a par with a death sentence. I hated school with a passion from the second day on. Books became my only friends.

And I have amassed a LOT of friends. Three libraries full, with the possibility of a fourth looming on the horizon. My parents inherited my grandfather's extensive library and added to it liberally. Instead of fashionable shoes or make-up or other girly teen-age things, I bought books. When I married and moved out of my 1,000 sq ft flat, I had 19 floor to ceiling bookcases. (And my husband had half a room devoted to books... we're pretty evenly matched in the book-ish department.) What we have spent on books over the decade would, if totaled, probably be equal to the purchase price of a small private island. When my mother passed away and we had to clean out her house, I stopped counting when the total of books passed 12,000, but we only ended up keeping about half that number. I remember bursting into tears when, while packing up the house, I thought I had found and properly packed all the books - then found BOXES of books under the double bed in the guest room. I was so upset I had to quit for the day.

We have sold books, donated books, given away books... and bought more. They accumulate under the furniture and form drifts in the corners. Lucky people have cobwebs; we have books.

But I wouldn't change it. We still head for one bookstore or another every few weeks, sternly telling ourselves we're just going to look and not buy anything. I'll bet you know how that turns out! (And I'm not going to say a word about my bulging e-reader. If we had hard copies of all the books on that lovely device the house would be so full we'd have to move into a tent in the back yard!)

They say addiction is an ugly thing; in many cases it is. In the case of books... not so much. As the FB meme says, "It's not hoarding if it's books!"