I am addicted to books. I don’t mean I go out and buy a book once or twice a month. I buy books once or twice a week. I have 3 bookshelves dedicated to the books I am going to read, both fiction and non-fiction. If the shelves start to look a little gappy – I panic and turn to my pusher, Amazon.

The nearest bookstore is a big box style, (somewhat like a Barnes and Noble) and although I have been known to shop there (‘Here m’am, you should have a basket to carry all those books’) it is sometimes hard to find older books in a series or more obscure titles. Hence Amazon. Millions of books, folks. How can I resist? I am currently reading Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnston (a National Book Award winner) and it is sublime. After that I may pick up a Robert Crais and see what PI Elvis Cole is up to. I’m no snob.

I’m not sure when my addiction began, perhaps when I would hunt in the few English bookstores in Quebec, both new and used, when I was writing my thesis to bolster the bibliography. Whatever the case, my frenzy for books has grown to frightening proportions. If books were crack, I’d be dead.

At least twice a week, when the book pile looks like it needs feeding, I order more books. The worst is that as a pusher, Amazon has me by the short and curlies. They send me ‘recommendations’ based on my previous buying pattern. That's like waving a bag of cocaine under an addict's nose. Sometimes they are way off the mark (Canadian Taxes - innapropriate unless you can list books as a taxable expenditure) but they often offer good hardcovers at almost the same price as a trade paperback. Who can resist??? (an addict’s rationalization, of course).There is also that Free Shipping offer (39 dollars or more). I can’t tell you the joy, when I am checking out with my little virtual shopping cart and they inform me that if I spent .12 cents more I could get free shipping. YIPEE! I can’t pass up a deal like that – so another book is added to the mix.

My postman has gotten to the point where he just hands me my new treasures and says ‘boy, you do read a lot don’t you?’ I do. I also video game (hardcore; Call of Duty, Gears of War, which might also classify as an addiction – and of course Amazon sells games too – oh joy) but there is nothing like the siren call of a book. Because I collect books, no matter what my mood I can find either something serious (politics, philosophy, real literature) or something fluffy. My spouse regularly drops in to my study to see what I’ve ordered that day.

It’s just that there is such an impossible amount of good books to be read and to coin a phrase, so little time. I wish I could simply inject them into my arm like a junky. I would love to own a book store, but I would be loathe to sell anything. I would have to interview each person buying a book, as one does when giving away kittens, to make sure the books was going to a good home ( do you wash you hands after eating Doritos and before reading a book? Do you use bookmarks and not turn down the pages?).

I expect I will die in my recliner with a book flopped on my ample chest. Happy for the final high.