Story 32: Story Addiction

It’s depressing when you realize that you’ll never have enough time to read all the books you want to read.  Never mind getting through the classics: it’s a Sisyphean struggle getting through that pile in your closet.  Just when you reached the bottom, it’s grown all over again.

Staying away from book sales doesn’t help – the darn library always keeps luring you in with its “free” loans and seemingly unlimited resources.  Is it your fault that the next installment of your current must-read series is sitting right there as you walk into the place, begging you to snatch it up?  How are you supposed to control yourself then?  It might as well have simultaneously placed itself in your handy bag and kicked you right back out the door.

And, of course, you can’t stay away from those book sales anyway.  You may never find that edition of Gone With the Wind anywhere else, and you’d always meant to read it one of these days.  Or years.

Getting an e-reader only makes this worse.  Sure, you won’t have the tower of power crashing on your head or leering at you from the corner, but now you have the never-ending queue of book-cover icons that face you every time you turn the thing on.  It’s equivalent to your never-ending movie and T.V. show queues: just one more, just one more….

I’m sure this can be classified as an actual addiction.  We'll always want another story, and when it’s done, we'll want another.  The question is, though, would anyone want to be cured?