Buying Books I Don't Read
James Atlas:
Like the drinker who treats his hangover with ‘the hair of the dog,’ I assuage my anxiety about all the books I’ve bought and not read by purchasing more. Somehow I imagine that if I buy a book I’ll read it. Time will stop; the day will mysteriously expand its number of hours. Suetonius’s Lives of the Poets will be absorbed by osmosis; Ben Franklin’s Autobiography, a slender volume, will — if it sits on the coffee table long enough — feel as if I’ve read it.
My Life in the Middle Ages, p. 156