A lavishly illustrated book At Home with Books, by Estelle Ellis, shows how some bibliophiles share their living space with sizeable collections of books.  But a perusal quickly suggests that At Home with Books is to ordinary bookoholics what Architectural Digest is to normal family living.  I can't look at the pictures without feeling guilty and inept.  Are there really people with vast collections of books who keep them all neatly lined up in beautiful bookcases?  Where are the double and triple shelved books? Where are the books laid horizontally on top of rows?  Even the out-of-the-bookcase stacks are artfully arranged.             

            Nowhere do you get a sense of people being chased out of rooms by their libraries. The photos suggest the owners are in control, whereas a true bookoholic knows this is a lie. At some critical point, the books take over. Just recently I discovered that my cookbooks had taken up sex. I left a cookbook in the kitchen over night and the next day discovered that its neighbors had had babies, as there was no space left when I tried to return it.

            Books have been ruling my life for decades.  My husband mildly disapproved of the size of my horde when we met. But in a perfect case of bad habits driving out good, he not only failed to straighten me up, but took on my habits, instead. He had spent his youth studying science and medicine, and in middle age developed a passion for filling in his education reading about economics, religion and wine. It has made him a more interesting person, but has not helped to stem the piles that sit at each bedside, because we have run out of shelves all over the house and in the basement. 

            From time to time we decide that we simply must exercise control.  Books get regulated to bags to donate to some worthy cause; others get put in boxes in the basement. We usually feel so pleased with ourselves after all this exertion that we celebrate by going to a bookstore -- just to browse, we tell each other.

            Was there any hope for our daughter? We should have realized it was a clue to her future when at a young age she regularly mixed up the words library and bookstore.  Early on part of her personal library migrated to under her bed, a level to which her parents have not yet sunk. 

            The summer before our daughter was to start college my husband and I got into an intense session of self-flagellation about being controlled by our books, wailing about our lack of self-control and upright habits of living. Our daughter kept trying to reassure us that our failings were not mighty. 

            One night when I was retiring, I saw her heading to the basement with a twinkle in her eye. The next morning I found a round wooden plaque fastened outside our front door.  KRISCH FAMILY LIBRARY it announced. 

            "What's this?" I asked.

            "Libraries are supposed to have lots and lots of books,” she explained. "If we just redefine this as a library, not a house, you can stop worrying about it." 

            Her reasoning didn't do a thing for our overflowing nightstands, nor for the pile in the corner of the den. But it does give her parents a chuckle every time we leave the house.  It also reassures us she loved growing up in a home not ruled by the book but by the books, thousands of them.  

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