Guilty pleasure

Oh no. What have I done.

I looked down. At the pen and paper in my hands.

Yet another list of book titles drawled out in my lazy script. Dozens of titles and authors lined up in pieces of paper. No, nothing harmless about that.

Where are the other lists? Lost in my black hole of a bag, lost in the folds of my notebook, lost in the depths of my over-thinking mind.

It's a mannerism, a coping mechanism, above all, a guilty pleasure.

The OCD in me is itching to tick off one book after the other because... that's what lists are for! I cross out one, two if I'm lucky, but never did I follow through.

But my carefree spirit says otherwise and tells me to just give in to my bibliophilic instincts. Let it take over me and, without so much as a second glance, I will know which trove is destined for me.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I feel like a hopeless case. All I have are endless titles and names rather than pulpy paperbacks. I'm swimming around in an ocean of lists.

Sometimes I think I'm more frustrated with the fact that I can't have all the books I want soon enough.

In the words of Matthew J. Bruccoli, scholar and F. Scott Fitzgerald biographer : "You don't buy books as an investment. You buy them because it gives you pleasure to read them, to touch them... to see them on shelves."

Is there anyone out there who feels the same way?