Books are my drug of choice

As a kid, I read to escape a less-than-optimum life. Reading under the covers at night, hoping the nuns couldn’t see the flashlight, I’d covered all the Nancy Drew books by the time I was eight. Ruined my eyesight in the process.

Read-a-holics cannot resist the printed word: It starts with cereal boxes at the breakfast table or newspapers abandoned in the restaurant booth by whomever ate there before you and continues into reading your high school English lit books the day you get them. This is not virtue. A therapist once posed the question: “so when did you discover that books were a neurotic escape?”

Motto: never leave home without a book. You never know when you might be trapped somewhere with nothing to read. Horrors.

I'm glad someone shares my obsession. I read on the Stairmaster, the treadmill--not great literature, but neverthess, something. (Actually, I find People magazine goes well on the Stairmaster. So does the New Yorker.)

I feel quite queasy when I go somewhere without a book. On vacation, I usually bring three for each day, just in case....And there's one in the car, in case I get stuck in traffic.

Logan Pearsall Smith said it best: "People say tht life is the thing, but as for me, I prefer reading."