Ten signs you may have a reading addiction

Monday, December 3rd, 2012

Since it’s coming up to Christmas, I’ve got into lists (I’m not planning to ask for a good temper though, like Clover Carr in What Katy Did. There’s only so much Santa can do, and he’s already bending space-time to finish his rounds.)

Reading addiction: you know you need help when you start to grow moss. 

But following on from the 10 Christmas Reads post, I bring you Ten Signs You May Be A Reading Addict. Whether you read fiction, non-fiction or both, do you recognise the following signs?

1. When you think of ‘essential items you can’t leave the house without’, ‘a book’ or ‘my Kindle’ comes ahead of keys, cash, travelcard…
2. If you don’t have a book, you try to read other people’s when sitting on the Underground/subway/bus. (At a pinch, a free paper will do, but it’s an inferior-grade substance. If you don’t even have that, you may find yourself reading other people’s free papers over their shoulder.)
3. Oops, was that my stop? I didn’t notice we were there already.
4. Big day tomorrow? Exam? Interview? You’ll go to sleep soon – just one more chapter (and no, that’s not one more chapter of Statistics for Necromancy or whatever it is you’re supposed to be reading).
5. You’re packing for your holiday. Clothes? Nah, how many books can I fit in 15 kilos plus one item of hand baggage no more than 10 kilos? After all, my Kindle might fail, or I might not be able to charge it, and besides, this book isn’t available as an e-book yet…Oops, excess baggage fees. A spare Kindle would have been cheaper!
6. OK, so you paid all those excess baggage fees for books, but there’s no harm in looking in the airport bookshop. Just something to pass the time while you wait for your airline to locate the crew…
7. There’s nothing wrong with reading as you walk. So sorry…oops…OWWW. ‘Can you tell me how many fingers I’m holding up?’
8. You’re moving and the number of boxes of books is greater than everything else put together. You have to upgrade to the next size van JUST for your books.
9. Yes, sure you like dead-tree books and bookshelves, but look: it’s Sunday night 11pm, your favourite authors all have new books out and…click, click, click…look, all in my handbag now! No need for the book withdrawal panic, or the ‘is it worth me taking this book when I only have 3 chapters left but I really want to find out whodunnit?’ dilemma.
10. And the dead giveaway: there are times when you would rather have a book than food. Eating, sleeping, breathing, reading – all basic life processes, right? Why did they not give you that extra mark in biology for correctly naming all eight?

I’m sure this can’t be the whole list – anyone got anything to add to this? Preferably with humiliating examples like no.7 in the above list. (For the record: I may be a reading addict but I haven’t yet sustained a concussion from it. I guess peripheral vision is more useful than we realise.)

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