My name is Doug.
I'm a bookworm.
I was a normal child. While my parents read, I really can't blame them for my addiction. I probably read a grand total of 5 books by the time I graduated high school. Okay, your right........that's probably an exaggeration. It was probably closer to 3. But something happened when I turned twenty.
It was like someone reached inside of me and threw a switch on. Suddenly I couldn't help myself. It started with reading the newspaper, front to back. Then a couple papers. Before long that did nothing for me. I picked up a paperback at the Walgreen. Wow, It was incredible. Two days later when I finished it I went back a bought a couple more. Before long I had a 3 book a week habit. It became abundantly clear that I couldn't keep this up. People would notice, the money would run out and the books would begin to pile up in the basement. That was when I remember something from gradeschool. It was a vague memory of a place filled with books. I got light headed and a little giddy thinking about that place. I went to visit the Public libray. I took my kids with me for cover. I figured if they each checked out five or six books then no one would notice me doing the same. The first few visits were torture. How does a person decide? There were just too many choices and I wasn't equipped for this. I almost passed out in the fiction section. I went down on one knee, pulled a book from a shelf and began to read. I felt better, then noticed I was reading a romance novel. I felt so cheap and dirty. I wanted to be rid of this addiciton and curse. Instead and picked up a Clancy novel and read a few chapters on guns, bombers, helicopters and submarines. The librarians shushed me when I began to grunt.
Over the years I've fed the book beast within me with great caution but with a constant diet of everthing from Stephen King to Charles Spurgeon (Yea, there's two names you won't find in the same sentence ever again). Somewhere along the line I discovered the bible. It can be read over and over and you never feel like you know all you need to know. Then I made the mistake of buying another translation. I won't tell you how many bibles I own, it's embarrassing. I started reading commentaries and that wasn't enough, I needed more. I now own a book on systematic theology. Where will it end?
Please don't pity me. I'm not asking for your sympathy just your understanding. There are millions like me all around. We're easy to spot if your really looking. We're the guys that sit in the car at the grocery store, reading a book. We're the guys that go to the dentist and hope we get to wait in the waiting room for an hour or more, so we can read. We can spot a bookstore from miles away. We can look down the boulevard of a million signs and see a bookstore with ease. It's like radar. We're the guys who spend hours in Books a Million, then go down the road to the Borders. We can't help it.
Where will it end? I don't know. It doesn't appear I will ever read all the books that need read. But I'm trying.
When I got [my] library card, that was when my life began.
~ Rita Mae Brown ~
~ Rita Mae Brown ~
A library is a hospital for the mind.
~ Anonymous ~
~ Anonymous ~
My recent and current reading list:
Charles Spurgeon: Lessons to my students.
R.C. Sproul: The Holiness of God
Chuck Smith: What the World is Coming To
Benjamin Hart: Faith & Freedom
Max Lucado: Traveling Light
Van Kampen: The Sign
Psalms
Isaiah
Acts
Just thinking & reading.
Doug
Facebook