Unreasonable torment.

Some, if not all, of you are aware that I have a desperate addiction. It consumes me on strange levels. My paychecks are devoted to it, my hours haunted by it. Sometimes I don't even want it. I just need to want it. I speak of books, of course. And this has been a summer for good books:

"The Crock of Gold" by James Stephens, "Momo" by Michael Ende (I almost fell over when I saw it. In retrospect it's completely natural that he wrote something other than "The Neverending Story" but I never would have thought it before), "Ecstasia" by Francesca Lia Block, "The DaVinci Code" by Dan Brown, The Dark Tower series, et cetera. Keith has become overly acquainted with my book addiction, with my habit of ignoring the need to eat, sleep, go to work, pee in extreme cases, and dote upon one's boyfriend so that I can read just a few more pages. Initially, he may have found it amusing but it solidly irritates him now. I read while walking down the street, while having dinner with Mary Page's family, while sitting in movie theatres and while hanging out at bars. I need these books. I need them.

That being said, I have just done something I rarely, if ever, do or have done before. I have purchased a brand new book at full price. I couldn't stop myself. I'm poor, I have bills, but I've been waiting for this book for so long that it had to be done. I saw it in the shop window and thought of nothing else until the next morning when the shop opened and then it was mine. I've never read this author's works because it's her first, and I knew only the bare bones of the plot. However, on the recommendation of Neil Gaiman, who has praised it greatly in his blog, and based on my absolute conviction (which strikes at random and arises from some dark place in my soul I can't identify) that this book was going to be amazing, I bought it for around $30 and took it straight to work where I promised myself I wouldn't open it until work was over and I was safely home.

Around noon I opened it anyway and did a drunken tightrope walk attempting to balance my reading and my working. At 4 o'clock I was 80 pages in and Keith arrived to ask if I wanted a hamburger. As I'd read through lunch, I felt very keen on the idea of a hamburger, so I gave him some money and proceeded to tell him about how wonderful "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell" by Susanna Clark is.

And it is.

Unfortunately, at this point, I made a grave and unforgiveable error. My only possible claim to reason is that Keith, while fond of books, does not have the sort of book illness that I have and I felt no danger. I needed the book out of the store so I could pretend I'd done something during the day. Towards that end I lent it to him to read as he walked down to the hamburger restaurant. I figured the first few pages would make him interested, and then when I was done in a day or two he could read it next.

Horror. Tragedy. He returned an hour later with the book firmly in grip, saying he was going to go home and read it there until I got off work. I wailed, tore my hair, and said he had no idea who he was dealing with. He pleaded, begged, and said he only wanted to finish the chapter he was on and then he would return it to me. I am quite familiar with the vicious sting of being torn away from a book before I reach a reasonable stopping point, so I granted this small request. I sat at my computer like a nervous wreck, playing Tetris, waiting for him to finish reading. I darted in and out of the room (he's not a slow reader, but I have a scandalously scant reserve of patience) and finally, gleefully, saw that he was on the last page of the chapter. I hummed merrily, played another game, and then was back on his bed and looking over his shoulder.

He was two pages into the next chapter. The wretchedness, the incivility, the utter cruelty! With great sternness, I told him that he was not allowed to read any more at all and that I needed that book back now. He asked how I could possibly know that he had gone into the next chapter and I snapped that I was psychic, then wrestled the book from him and read for the new few hours. He did not read it again at all that day, I saw to that.

Today, however, he came by my work again and.. like a fool, I again lent him the book since I had another few hours at work and wasn't reading it. Now I am home. He is not. His car is gone, his cell phone is off, and the book is nowhere to be found. I am gripped with despair, and bent on teaching him the meaning of pain.

I have thoroughly learnt my lesson. Never again will I allow someone to read a book when I'm in the middle of an attack of severe book addiction. It's too painful.

Or will be.

For him, that is.

And, my friends tell me today that my new nickname is "Book Nazi." I prefer "Book Bitch." They say either way, they're going to make a t-shirt.