I have tons (literally) of books, and am an admitted bibliophile\u2014but I\u2019m app-roaching treating my desire as a mild addiction, sometimes called \u201cbiblioholism,\u201d and undertaking a program of divesting. It\u2019s difficult, and full of discoveries.<\/p>\n
I have attachments to categories of topics that I am coming to recognize that I shall not revisit. There are variable degrees of clingy-ness to these, some stronger and some less so. One of those categories, for example, is military history. As a youth, I was interested in military battles and history, conquests and all. It compensated for my fear of being beaten up by others. I pretended I was a general coordinating battles. I played with flat-topped screws of various types, pretending they were soldiers. (They were available from my father\u2019s jars of screws.) There were many more of them than model soldiers, and they could play many roles. Their posture wasn\u2019t determined\u2014they just lined up.<\/p>\n
But war topics wore out, especially since I reviewed the field more recently in my late 70s.. I realized, first, that I would never be so educated about so complex and multi-faceted a topic that I could teach about it. Nor, I realized further, did I especially want to do so. I liked history, and military history\u2014or used to\u2014but this role (albeit partly fantasized) wore out. It got thin, first, so the books were hidden on a bottom shelf by laundry baskets!<\/p>\n