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I am a self-confessed bookworm whose whole life revolves around reading. Well, I don’t have my nose stuck to a paperback twenty-four hours a day, but whenever I am not reading, I spend most of my time scouring The Strand, updating my Visual Bookshelf application on Facebook, checking out the bestseller’s list, keeping myself abreast with reviews in the newspaper, or looking up the Internet for online discounts on the latest novels and short story collections. I began reading at the tender age of two. Riding with my father in his car, I would look at the doors of buildings and the signs at the shops and attempt to decipher what those weird-looking letters meant. I mispronounced everything early on; my father would laugh at me. There was a sense of satisfaction whenever I uttered the words correctly – a satisfaction made even greater by a tender pat on the back, or rub of the head. British scholar and apologist C.S. Lewis once said that “we read to know we are not alone.” That appears to be the case with me. While I had formed my own circle of friends in school, in the neighborhood, or at summer camps, there was no company more agreeable to me than a book. There still isn’t. I have come to consider words and letters, thank heaven, as my best friends. It sounds terribly geeky, I know, but you have no idea what kind of thrill I get out of finishing thirty chapters in one sitting, or out of completing a purchase at Amazon or Barnes & Noble, with its impressive selection of online discounts. Reading is also a way for me to build myself up; it’s my source of nourishment for the mind. It helps improve my vocabulary; it makes me a more discerning thinker; it guides me in the daily choices I have to make at work (I am an editor by profession; I work for a magazine by day and provide consultancy services to an ad agency on a freelance basis.) And of course reading books helps me gain knowledge that one would not normally find in the four corners of a classroom. There is, however, one major problem that I have with this habit. In building a sort of personal library at home, I seem to have run out of space. Some of the clothes in my closet have even been displaced by stacks of Penguin Classics. Now I need to pay a visit to the furniture shop to select and buy a bookshelf – or bookshelves. I am also having trouble with organization; what is the best way to come up with a catalog? (Sadly, I cannot yet afford a librarian. Ha!) And, if I wasn’t too frugal and scrupulous with finding the best and most affordable prices, I imagine that I would have spent a fortune on all of the two thousand titles that I now have. Yes, two thousand – most of which I acquired from used/ second-hand bookstores or from merchants’ online discounts, and all of which I treasure, like a friend that keeps me company.
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