Bookworminess
The trouble with me is that I'm interested in too many things.
Etymology (the origin & history of words), crossword puzzles, brainteasers, calligraphy, origami (the Japanese art of paper-folding), card-making, the world of nature, physiology, poetry & limericks, biographies, the strange/wonderful/stupid things that people say & do, history (interesting to read but don't ask me to remember any of it!), sign language, inventors & their inventions... I'm interested in all of these.
And I have at least one book on each of these subjects.
Then come the classics Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, George Orwell, Shakespeare, etc. and crime/murder mysteries (mostly Perry Mason).
Finally, there are books on various Christian themes: prayer, hearing God's voice, godly womanhood, singleness, doubt, surrender, holiness, grace, and so on.
I buy books to keep, and I buy those that I want to read. Never mind if I've read less than a quarter of them; "I'll get round to reading these one day," I tell myself as I add another to the already humongous pile.
At the back of my mind, I admit, lurks a certain pride in my mini-library. When my boss first interviewed me almost two years ago, one of the things he asked was, "Are you a 'book snob'?" I said no, but I now think I was wrong. I've caught myself holding a book in my hand, thinking, "This will look so good on my shelf!"
Those books usually come under the "books I should read to broaden my knowledge but haven't" category. You know, things like Voltaire. I have Candide I believe it's sitting in one of the boxes in my room back at my parents' house. Please don't ask me what it's all about. Oh dear.
So I guess you could say that my books reflect the person I want to be, or wish I could be. At the heart of it, I do want to be a well-read, knowledgeable person. I want to know and do so many things. And, because my interests are so diverse, I end up knowing only a little of each subject mastering only a little of each craft. It's the ol' Jill-of-all-trades-but-master-of-none syndrome. Not really able to know or do any one single thing really well.
Most people would say that this is a bad thing; it's called being "unfocussed". But I'm starting to think that it's not necessarily bad. I'll explain why another time right now, I've got to go read a book I've been promising myself I would read for ages.
Now, if I could just stop buying any more books...