I have a book problem. Hardcore. My husband groans when I say I want to stop by the bookstore. I simply cannot walk out empty handed, and I never take less than two hours. Not long ago, I applied for a job at Barnes and Noble and husband just laughed, knowing full well I wouldn't actually be making any money. But, at least I would be feeding my own habit.

We went to the bookstore on our anniversary as a treat to me, and just for fun, husband told me to add up the price of everything that caught my eye in 30 mins. Stuff that I would genuinely be interested in reading. I spent $540 in 30 mins.

Geez. I hope they pay well.

"When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes." Desiderius Erasmus

I made a conscious decision some time ago to stop buying books. I had something like 20 crates of books I was moving across country every couple years. It's expensive and painful. I donated a lot of them to local libraries and gave some away and sold a few. Now, I find myself buying them back. The piles and crates and shelves are growing again.

You would love to visit the Tattered Cover in Denver, Colorado. I would love to come visit your bookstore. I might need more crates.

A friend of mine who was taking a Library Science degree once interviewed me about my reading habits, and upon hearing the interview, her prof said this to my friend: "Your interview subject is what we call an omnivorous reader."

I am quite prepared to loan the term out to you, because compared to you my tastes in reading are almost as narrow as my tastes in eating (which are only marginally better than the Bub's, and he won't eat anything but Cheerios).

At various points in my life, I have laid down certain rules: "I won't read anything about a boy" (age 12), "I won't read anything that isn't set in England" (facetiously, at age 34, in a fruitless attempt to avoid the George R.R. Martin fantasy novels my husband was trying to get me to read, which I eventually did read, and loved, though in a way that doesn't count as breaking my rule because they really ARE set in England, just with more dragons).

It wasn't Lewis who said (in the movie) that we read to know we're not alone; it was the angry young man from the wrong side of the tracks whom Lewis catches in the act of shoplifting a book. And he's someone who comes from outside Lewis's comfort zone and stretches him to rethink his world view (as, indeed, everything in that movie is about the enormously painful process of rethinking one's firmly held beliefs).

Since putting that post up last night and reading the responses to it this morning, it has occurred to me that there are two bloggers, at least, that I read somewhat obsessively BECAUSE of the differences between myself and them: you and Owlhaven (who are, in turn, enormously different from one another, though you do share that thirst to read across boundaries).

I would just like to pipe up and state my claim at having survived a trip to the World's Biggest Bookstore, once upon a time. But if I remember correctly, I definitely finished my browsing before you did, and we probably only managed to leave because there were other stores on our list of places to go that fun little Friday. :)

I remember my first trip to WBBS. I think I was about 12, and I was being taken as part of a birthday treat. I could even pick out a book to buy! (One. In that store. Geez.)

At the time, I found the Penguin room and thought I'd gone to heaven. I haven't been there in years (since I'm in the US now, alas), but it was my introduction to the idea that reading things you'd never heard of was a good thing to do. Thanks for reminding me.

Pamela
(Look, I delurked!)

I tend to agree with you that not all people read to feel as if they are part of a tribe, or of something larger. I know *I* don't, either. I read because a part of me would wither and die out were I *not* to read.

I do, however, tend to congregate to my "sections" of the store. I usually head for the mysteries and then the crafts. Although, I will try just about anything. I also have a problem with books -- too many of them, and I would willingly spend all kinds of money on them. I can't go to the bookstore too often because it presents such an all mighty temptation.

Like KLee, I read because I *have* to. I just love the act of reading. And like you, Andrea, I read to get out of the cabin. *Shameless plug for my profession*: If you want to save money on books, just use the library! From what I understand, you have very good public libraries in Canada.

It has occurred to me that what you and I are describing may be rather typical NF and NT motivations for reading: as an INTJ, you are driven to learn, to understand, to expand your mind, and as an INFJ I am primarily motivated to connect, to build relationships, and to create community. That's not to say that we can't do both, but just to identify what our fundamental drives are. It might also shed some light on our different perspectives on the blogosphere; to me, it seems evident that the primary function of blog-writing and -reading is to build relationships, while to you it's more important to explore and share ideas.

bubandpie, that's an interesting distinction - I wonder...I am an INFP, and I am not really sure why I read - I do it for so many reasons.

Andrea, that bookstore Zazzy mentioned is the one I have told you about - 4 floors of books! big stuffed chairs!! People at the counters who know what their talking about!!

Last time I was looking for a book at the tattered cover, I asked for "can you recommend something about structuralism?" or something equally like that - not only could they recommend it, they had several cross references.

I shop at TC the way you shop at most bookstores. When I am at B&N, though, I don't get quite so browsy. It's too commercial. Not a great selection. Though! At the BN in Poughkeepsie, I almost took a few pictures of the philosophy and art criticism sections - they had sections! not 'shelves" - but a wall and a half of philosophy! That doesn't happen at the BN in Denver.

BA & Zazzy--ah, a tribe of fellow print addicts! Yes, if the TC is the store Rachel has been telling me about for years, you're right. I would like it. Perhaps enough that I would never leave it.

Bubandpie--well, you see, you've obviously seen that movie more recently than I have, or you have a frighteningly good memory, because all I can clearly recall about it is a) Anthony Hopkins looked sad a lot, b) there was an amusing scene were someone told Lewis that the fur coats in teh wardrobe were a stand-in for a woman's vagina, which he found quite offensive and c) his wife died.

And there goes my standing as an intellectual....

I think the personality thing is an interesting question. But I'm not sure ... for one thing, while I don't find there to be A Community online for anything, and the whole concept makes me twitchy (in my experience online communities, when they form, are pretty exclusionary), but I do feel I've formed connections and perhaps found myself in a community of loosely-defined people, and I value that community highly. It's just that this community isn't necessarily formed of people who have a lot in common. Well, not visibly.

And I mean, if I were to try to find A Community based on commonalities, after a certain point it would be absurd--how many type 1 diabetic witch anarchist mothers of daughters with undiagnosed genetic syndromes do you know? It's not quite the same as if I were an episcopalian democrat mother of a daughter of an average size--bigger pool.

Christine, I remember that! :)

Pamela, thanks for delurking. :)

Kris, libraries are municipally funded here, so it depends on the size of the town you live in. If you live in a largish city, the libraries are amazing. Otherwise, not so much.

I do look in the library for whatever books I can find there, but because my city is approx. 80,000, the selection isn't great. Also, I'm not kind to books. I put tags in them, break the spines, write notes in the margins, and so on. Library books require a certain amount of deference, and while I go to the library as much as I can, I find that even then, if I find a book I love with ideas I want to dig into and interact with, I pretty well have to buy a copy for myself.

Fiction is different--I'm better with library fiction than non-fiction.

...after this, I'm left jonesing for the WBBS in the worst way.

*lol* Luckily for me I married another book addict. Our "dates" particularly since we had the baby involve going to Indigo and getting 2 expensive coffees(unless we are really broke, then we skip this bit) and then first we start with the magazines. He reads the ones we can't afford and aren't really worth the price (Audio and Music mags. Like $15-$25 to read ADVERTISING, no review ever says bad things because that would cost advertising dollars.) and I read some current event mags or parenting mags (So I can yell at them..... yeah, I know, ok)

Then we meander up the middle section with the new , on sale, and featured. We grab what snags our attention. Usually we wonder through computer/business (and there is sometimes a discount table of toys and candies hidden in there) Then we go through fiction, I don't just grab things the way I used to. Not enough money or reading time *sigh*. Then I head off to *my* section, the discount section. teehee. If it is under $5 and even remotely interesting it goes in the pile. Then we hid either on the window ledges in the back behind sports/comedy (because it is less busy) or on the stairs (if hubby stops first, I don't like hanging out on the stairs, I like it even less now that we have the baby). I buy so many books about so many things, and hubby rarely understands when I say a book that is priced for $1 isn't worth it and usually tells me to buy it anyway.

But my true, true Achilles heel. I used to go to auctions with my mom as she had a second hand store and she would go get merchandise and needed help. So she could go smoke and whatnot and not miss things and then pack it all up. Boxes of books, box lots of books I have so many books in the basement right now, that I can't give away because I haven't read them yet. But you have to be in a certain mood to read about Sandscript, Set Theory, the political history of Botswana, English text books from 1930, etc. And really, we all know, once I read them they will still be stuck in my library for ever!

Oh and Andrea (and anyone else in Toronto) it is worth checking out the second hand book store above Tortilla Flats on Queen near Spadina. The owner is pretty knowledgeable and the prices are good. I, however, can never return because he has a crush on me *sigh*. He isn't dangerous, just unrelenting and sad. (I was 17, he was late forties)

Your post made me nostalgic for the World's Biggest Bookstore! One of the (few) things I miss about living near Toronto.

So I've been thinking more about my NT/NF theory, and here's what I've come up with. When I think about the novels I enjoy, the key factor is that I have to like (which usually means identify with) one of the characters in order to "get into" the book. Once I AM in, my favourite books are those that teach me, stretch me, broaden my thinking - but that happens chronologically second. Ian McEwan's Atonement is a great example: I loved that book immediately because I strongly identified with the protagonist, but what I enjoy most about the book now is the dazzling way it exposes its own methods of creating and then modifying that sympathy. I loved teaching that book because from one class to the next I would discover new things in it that would break my head right open.

The same kind of chronological relationship seems to apply to my blogging habits - what pulls me in is similarity and what keeps me interested is difference (and do note that by similarity I'm not necessarily referring to externals - that sense of kinship could be based on something as superficial as a shared love of Starbucks gingerbread lattes or as abstract as a shared sense of the ridiculous).

And the sense I'm getting from the way you've described your reading habits is that for you the process goes in the opposite direction: you are drawn in by differences first (motivated by intellectual curiosity, among other things) and then from that foundation build connections.

(And since we're on the topic of C.S. Lewis, I'm very reminded here of the way he described his love for his wife after she died: what he missed most acutely was her difference from himself, the one thing that, by definition, he could not imaginatively recreate: the total unexpectedness of her point of view, the way their minds sharpened one another in conflict. It's an interesting description of marriage, and not the kind of description it would ever occur to ME to write.)