Do you want to carefully cultivate a mild, obsessive-compulsive form of insanity? Follow the steps below.

1. Become a book lover.

2. Decide to build a personal permanent library.

3. Select titles of great value to you to put in this library.

4. Pare down list to under 300 books (see Steps 8 and 9).

5. Search high and low for the right editions, ideally ones that will last the rest of your lifetime.

6. Bang head against nearest wall when certain books are found not to have such editions.

7. Work out way of organizing the library, whether alphabetical by author or title, etc.

8. Figure out how to pay for all of this.

9. Figure out how to STORE all of this.

10. Bookplates are essential.

11. Run hands over the spines every so often. They look nice on that shelf, don’t they?

Take my word for it. Loving to read can sometimes seem like it would be remedied by a straitjacket and a padded cell. But then…all love makes us do crazy things sometimes.