My name is Glenn and I am a librophiliac

I have a confession to make.  I love books.  I mean, I really love them.  One glance at my office can tell you that, as three of the four walls have bookshelves on them.  And not just any books, mind you.  Good ones (at least I think so).  I have culled my herd at least three times in the past decade and I am still running out of bookshelf space. I have books everywhere; on the stand beside my bed, you will find Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.  As I stumble to the washroom each morning, I grab it and read a page on two.  The same goes on every night before I go to sleep.  I simply cannot go to sleep if I don't read first.  I do wonder what people would think of me, however, if they were to learn that lately I have started and ended each day reading about Adolf Hitler. But such is the life of the librophiliac. I cannot always control what grabs my interest at a particular time. Downstairs on the couch, you will find the equally massive tome, Christopher JH Wright's The Mission of God. I haven't read much of it in the past couple of weeks though. It's a good book, but my mood hasn't been right for such reading. Besides, that is one of my downfalls; I like to start books - I don't always finish them.  I feel guilty about that, but I probably shouldn't.  Why waste time on something that can't keep my attention?  But I am one of those guys who likes to finish what they start and so my life (and desk) is stacked up with half read books.  On my desk at work, I have 2-3 others stacked up beckoning out to me.  I hear their cries but resist.  How many can I read at a time?

Calvin Miller, in his 1985 article “Confessions of a Librophiliac” in Christianity Today (January 18, 1985, page 32) said, quite correctly, "Readers, on the other hand, have at least 7.5 books going all the time. Actually, the number of books a reader takes on is usually directly related to the number of bathrooms he has in his home and office. I am working on a survey that will show that, over a lifetime, readers are in bathrooms seven years and three months longer than nonreaders."