Book addict :)

I had to laugh when I saw this recent tweet from Anne Helen Petersen, because it's SO TRUE!!  lol  (for me, anyway!)(Read the comments!)

My bookshelves weren't always groaning with unread books.  We certainly had books around the house when I was growing up, but they were pretty much all well read (often more than once) & well loved.

(As I wrote a while back, in this post & this post, bookstores were far & few between back then -- if anything, it was a rack of paperbacks in the drugstore -- and most of them Harlequin romances, at that...!  We relied a lot on the library for reading material.)

When I look back, I can pinpoint the approximate time frame when our book collection took off, and my TBR ("to be read") pile grew completely out of control (= mid/late 1990s) -- and a couple of reasons why.

First, that was about the time that mega-bookstores came to Canada (think Barnes & Noble, those of you in the U.S.), under two brands, Indigo & Chapters (which both still exist, but now under the same ownership). We'd had at least half a dozen bookstores (both chains & independents) within walking distance of the midtown Toronto apartment where we'd lived in the late 1980s, and there was a Coles in the local mall in the suburb where we moved in 1990 (also now under the same ownership as Indigo & Chapters)... but THEN, around 1995-ish, they opened a Chapters in the neighbouring suburb just down the road. (Drool, drool...) A Saturday night browse after dinner out became our new weekend routine -- and we rarely left without a bag in hand. I received a "Lifetime" iRewards card fairly early on (10% discount on almost all purchases, on top of any other discounts the store might be offering), and it's been so well used, the magnetic strip has worn out. Clerks' eyes widen when they see the "lifetime" designation -- they don't give those suckers out anymore!! (They now have "Plum Points" cards, but I've been advised by more than one clerk that my iRewards card is a MUCH better deal, and to hang onto it!) (It actually has an expiry date on it -- 2025 -- which seemed like a LONG way off when I first got it...!  I'm hoping they will still honour the "Lifetime" designation at that point... guess we'll see...!)

(Of course, a few years after that, along came online booksellers, including Chapters/Indigo and Amazon, and then e-readers, which meant that just about any book you wanted was available, somehow, somewhere... my 10-year-old mind would have boggled at the thought...!)

Second, by the mid/late 1990s, dh & I had both been working for a decade or more, and paying down our mortgage for more than five years. We had more disposable income to feed our addiction, lol.  We reasoned that some people blow their money on beer and cigarettes... (and, necessarily, on diapers, tuition fees, etc.) ...we spend ours on reading material. :)

Finally, there's an ALI-related reason (you knew there had to be one, right?).  I distinctly remember thinking, after our daughter was stillborn in 1998 and we began trying again, that my next pregnancy might be high risk... I might have to spend some time on bedrest. Best to stockpile some reading material, right? (Well, that was my excuse, anyway...). It's 20+ years later, & I am still stockpiling...!  ;) 

I may never get to the bottom of my TBR pile (because it just keeps growing...!) ...but it's a good "problem" (and a "first-world" one at that...!) to have...  ;) 

Can you relate to this tweet too?  When was the last time you reached the bottom of your "to be read" pile? (HAVE you ever reached the bottom??)