Moira on the road

That's the number of my books.

*My* books, the ones that I bought with my own money (well.. at the beginning with my parents' money). I still have the first book that I bought by myself: "I dolori del giovane Werther" by Goethe. It was 1993 and I was 14. Five years later I had a crush on a guy with the same name (fortunately the crush lasted less than the book). Fifteen years later I have 589 books, an average of 40 books per year. Considering that from 15 to 19 I didn't buy many, do the maths for yourselves on the last couple of years...

It took me 4 days to review them all and include them in my brand new list (so now I know which ones are at my parents' place, which ones in Trieste, which ones in NYC and which ones with me wherever I live). I had to abandon some of them in DR two years ago, and some in Kenya a couple of weeks ago. It is always very difficult for me to leave a book behind, but sometimes there's no choice (curse on luggage limits imposed by airlines follows)

I suffer from a very rare (at least in Italy) pathology called bibliomania, with the aggravation of book lust. I think I inherited it from my mum, but I took the pathology to a new level of perfection: it is phisically impossible for me to enter in a bookshop and get out without at least one book. Needless to say, since I earn my own money I have no shame: yesterday I bought 6 books, and last week I bought 3. I buy more books that I can read, that's why I call it book lust. I spend obscene amounts of money on books, and I am very proud of it! I have never regretted a single lira, euro, dollar, peso or shilling. I try to buy a book in every city I visit (airports included) and until now I covered 3 continents and I don't know how many countries.

I have 18 books by Oscar Wilde and 5 on him (he was my favorite writer for a long time, as you can imagine). I have 10 books by Thomas Mann, 3 different versions of Madame Bovary (in Italian, English and French) and two of One hundred years of solitude (in Italian and Spanish, and I still have to buy the one for the 40th anniversary). I also bought the same book twice because I wanted to read it and I had forgotten I had it in another country (duh!). I have to admit I have some books that were not mine (didn't really mean to steal them but they are with me now so technically they are stolen...) and a discrete number of my books are now in someone else's hands.

On my bedside table there are currently 21 books. My good resolution for today is to read them all in the next couple of months, but I know it won't happen. I already have a list of books I want to buy next time I go to the city...I am recovering from one whole year without reading a single book in Italian, you have to understand! I have so much to read before leaving Italy again!!!

Sadly, there are 2 MIA (missing in action) books: I should have them but they are not here and I have no idea where they are now. There are some books that always travel with me: my favorites and my medicines (books can have curative effects, at least on me). There are some embarassing books (I can't believe I bought them!). There are snob-books, meta-books (books on books) and cursi-books. If you follow the dates written on them you can see the evolution of my interests and taste: when I was in secondary school I was an unbearable snob who only read literature, possibly obscure authors that only my 60 years old literature professor and I had ever heard of (plus of course Oscar Wilde), now I have no shame and read absolute crap together with daunting essays on psychopatology of colonization - see? I can still be a snob if I want :D

I have the habit of writing on them, particularly on essays: I include references to other books, comment what the author says, sometimes get annoyed and write nasty comments to him/her directly on the book. There was a time when I believed books were sacred and couldn't be touched, I wouldn't even underline a word. Now I love "lived" books, books with coffee stains, comments everywhere, bookmarks and cards and telephone numbers noted on their pages, books that one day will remind me of my life when I was reading them.

I am in love with books, will always be.