Friday, April 07, 2006

(Your) Thoughts (and Addictions) on Books...

I'm one of those people who are susceptible to other people's yawns. You yawn around me and I'm going to start up.

It's bad.

One day in the store, I've got this guy with jaw-cracking yawns in the SciFi/Fantasy section, and I can just feel myself get sleepier and sleepier as I yawned too. Duriing a break between one of his yawn sets he turns to me and says, "I think there is an opiate in the ink."

And I, desperately trying to not expose my tonsels to the entire store, have my mouth covered, so I mumble, "Wha?"

"Opiates. I think there are opiates in the ink they use for the books and that's why we're all so tired."

"Part of some greater master plan, maybe?" I say because you get weird theories in bookstores all the time and you just learn to go with them.

"Probably, but it's too late for me." He grabbed a book and grinned. "I'm obviously already addicted."

Me too. The feel of the paper, the slide of the cover, even when the cheap ink rubs off onto your fingers: I'm addicted all the way.

How about you? What's your book addiction? What genre can you just not quit? What author, despite how bad they are, do you just keep going back to? Or are you a paper addict too?

We're all here to share and support.

10 comments:

Rowan said...

I'm a reading addict, full on. SF/F is my genre (though anything good could pique my interest), but also scientific books, magazines (gaming, science, SF/F) and more and more books, to the point where our new house had to have a room suitable for a library.

Shanna Swendson said...

Books in general are my addiction. I have a To-Be-Read pile that I'm considering using to soundproof a room, I'm on deadline with a book of my own, and yet I still can't go into a library or a bookstore without walking away with something. I feel lost if I don't have a book I'm in the process of reading. As soon as I finish one, I have to start another, even if I do no more than read the first page, or else I feel itchy, even when I'm doing something else.

Genre varies by mood and season. Fall is generally for mysteries, summer for romance and chick lit, winter is fantasy, science fiction depends on the book itself, but a book I'm dying to read will be fit in whenever I get it.

lady t said...

My genres have waxed and waned over time-in my teens and early adulthood,I was a big horror fan. I've cut down on that quite a bit-still grab a decent Dean Koontz or Stephen King now and then.

Also got into mysteries for awhile but have cooled on that,except for the Ladies #1 Detective Agency series and the Thursday Next books(which are really more in the sci/fi fantasy area). My biggest vices have been paranormal romances and chick lit of late.

Anonymous said...

I'm with Shanna- I love them all. There is something so wonderfully tactile about a new book with it's crisp spine and how the pages smell a bit like laundry. Mmmmm

Anonymous said...

Diana Gabaldon is my dirty little secret. I have all the books and I've read them all at least three times. Not only that, I've made three other people addicts, too -- and two of them are men! Bwah-ha-ha!

Now, if Jane Austen had only written more than 6 books...(sigh)

Lisa Hunter said...

Coffee table books! I'd need a coffee table the size of my living room to fit all of them.

I got hooked on them when my son was small and I had no time to read "real" books. Flipping through pictures of Renaissance art or Bauhaus architecture or nature photography kept me sane. Now it's a habit, albeit an expensive one.

Wendy said...

3 words: Lilian Jackson Braun.

Lord help me, I don't know why I still read her books. Fans suspect they are now "ghost-written." I contend that if they were ghost written they'd be better!

Sigh - at least I know longer buy her books. No, I wait for a copy at the library.

Kate said...

My dog can make me yawn.
the word yawn can make me yawn.

I am currently only addicted to blogs which is cheaper than. . .oh no wait! Shit! I forgot AND IT IS ALL YOUR FAULT.

Christopher Moore.

Carrie Jackson said...

I'm addicted to the smell of books. Whenever I buy one, I have to crack it open and just inhale.

And also Laurel K. Hamilton. It doesn't matter how horrible and ridiculous the Anita Blake series becomes; I just can't stop myself from reading them.

Jean L. Cooper said...

It's not paper I'm addicted to, it's the written word. I'll read 'em in any format. (Ebooks are wonderful -- when you are out in public, you don't have to hide the covers with the half-naked guys and bodice-ripped women.) I've even been known to read the backs of cereal boxes if I'm hard up for reading material.