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No, I’m not confessing to using drugs or alcohol.

I’m a reformed smoker, so no cigarette has crossed my lips for over 42 years, and I’m proud of that fact. I’m also one of the few people who just can’t develop a liking for wine, fine or otherwise. And a glass of ice water or club soda with a lime twist is almost always just as enticing to me as a cocktail laden with calories. I don’t even think that drugs would be a temptation. They never have been and probably at this stage of my life never will be.

I do subscribe to the theory, however, that everyone is addicted to something. Do you believe that? I find that everyone I meet has something in his or her life that they cannot do without, whether it’s chocolate or brandy or afternoon naps. Sometimes those addictions are subtle; sometimes, like with drugs or alcohol or tobacco, they’re more obvious.

What I am addicted to is books. Fiction, non-fiction, current or written decades ago, if it strikes my fancy, I add it to my collection in the fanciful hope that I will live long enough to read it. By my mathematical calculation, I now need to live to the age of 117 to read everything on my “to be read” table and on my Kindle app on my iPad mini. This is, as I said, partially due to the fact that my addictive behavior causes me to keep adding to the stack and the Kindle list. Just when I say – okay, just when I vow – that I will not, absolutely will not purchase another book until I have read everything on that table and on the Kindle, someone recommends a book that I reason about this way: “I’d better get it while it’s fresh in my mind.” Or I read a blurb about a novel (or a favorite author) that sounds so enticing that I absolutely cannot for the life of me turn away from it. It’s what a cigarette is to the smoker. A drink to the alcoholic. It’s irresistible. I’m just a girl who can’t say no when it comes to books.

As you can see by the photograph I took with some degree of embarrassment of the small table in my home office on which I set newly purchased books to be read, the stacks are in danger of falling over. They should be getting shorter. They are not. I have plenty of time to read most days, so this isn’t the problem. I don’t work full time, and I’m very kind to myself in the sense that my work normally finishes around 2 in the afternoon and gives me hours and hours for reading and relaxing. And I’m a fast reader!

As you can see, I’ve thought through this, from rationales to excuses, and come up blank.

There’s no reason that I shouldn’t be seeing a shortening to the stack of books I own on my little table…except for the fact that I keep adding to it.

So do me a favor: if you see me or talk to me, don’t recommend a book to me for at least the next five years. Let’s see if I can get through the books I already own.

And whatever else you do, please don’t ask me to meet you in the Starbucks inside of a Barnes & Noble bookstore!! Please have mercy!!