I don’t think of myself as having an addictive personality. But I think I delude myself. I don’t smoke, and have never done drugs, so those things aren’t my addictions. But I clearly have a dangerous, and not very understandable, addiction to books. Why, I don’t know. But (and you might already know that) I think we have about 10,000 in our house. When you think about it, that’s ridiculous.

Now, of course, some of those books are Edie’s, not mine. I would guess fewer than 10%. And at one time, my books probably didn’t exceed hers by many. But then, something happened.

I think it’s probably been about 30 years, maybe more, that I started to buy books in quantity. Not necessarily hundreds at once. But one or two a day, and every now and then a couple of bags full at book sales. By the time I retired from law practice in 2012, I had about as many as I have now. And, what’s more important, I couldn’t help myself.

A few years before that, I decided I needed to fight the addiction. I didn’t think I could do it by stopping my purchasing, but I thought I could do it by selling the books that I had. So Edie and I started an on-line business, A. Richard Books and More, and began to sell through Abebooks (then known as the American Book Exchange). We have done this since, and we sell between 250 and 300 books a year, consistently. But since I buy about the same number of books as we sell, I haven’t seen much progress.

When I first thought about selling books, I thought that the income could be used to fund our travel. But maybe that felt too indulgent, so I thought instead we should take the proceeds and help fund our grandchildren’s education, and that’s why we are doing.

Now, I should also say that, over this time, I have given away hundreds of books, maybe over 1,000, so it’s not that I am simply hoarding them, irrespective of what they are. And, we have sold – over the time we have doing this – close to 3,000 books.

At first, I bought books I liked. And most of the books were not new, but used, so the prices I have paid have always been low. But at some point, maybe 20 years ago, I began to buy books signed by the author. Which makes me wonder whether I have a book collection, or an inefficient autograph collection.

How did that start? It started at Second Story Books, near Dupont Circle in Washington. They have always had outside displays of used books for sale, and walking there when I went out for lunch became a regular kind of thing. I used to look carefully at the mostly (but not all) worthless books, and I noticed one day a book that was signed by the author. I knew that these cheap books ($2 to $4 each) would be recycled if they weren’t purchased for the week or so they would sit outside of the shop, and I thought that a book signed by its author should not be destroyed. That it would be an insult to the author. So I bought the book. And this continued on and on.

At first, I’d buy everything that was signed. Then I realized this was crazy, and I began to be a little (just a little) selective. I have never been as interested in fiction as in non-fiction, so my fiction books have been limited to books in very good condition, while the non-fiction includes books that are far from pristine. And there were some areas – Judaism and Jews, history and politics – that I am most interested in, so sometimes these were the only sections of books for sale that I looked at.

And, I should add that although most of the books I buy are signed, if I find something else that is both unusual and interesting, I will take that, too.

There’s a lot (really a lot) I could say about my book adventures, and I raise the subject on this rainy Saturday because I spent the morning at the annual used book sale at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda. Now, next week is the annual book sale at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, which is really a production. I don’t know if Walter Johnson has a sale every year; this is the first time I have noticed it. Last night, I said to myself “Well, I don’t need more; I’m not going.” But this morning, my addiction took over, and I went.

It was a fairly dull sale, I thought. A fair number of books, a lot of people, but not much of interest to me. I bought 4 books (paid a total of $12).

The most interesting book that I took home was a very nice copy of We Fed an Island by Washington chef Jose Andres, his story of bringing meals to Puerto Rico after the island was devastated by a hurricane. It is signed (no inscription) by Andres, and there are no signed copies for sale on the Abebooks web site. Then a nice, signed first edition of Jack by Marilynne Robinson, a book of fiction by a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist. Third, because I like books about Russia, I bought an inscribed copy of Arkay Ostrovsky’s The Invention of Russia: from Gorbachev’s Freedom to Putin’s War. The book was published in 2015, and the war is the 2014 invasion of Ukraine, not the 2022 invasion. My guess is that this book is prescient. Finally, to prove that I buy a variety of books, I bought an inscribed copy of Bruce Boudreau’s Gabby. Gabby is not about Gabby Gifford, but about Boudreau himself, who has been the coach of the Washington Capitals, as well as several other NHL teams. He coached the Caps from 2007-2011 – this books was written in 2009.

I should write more about my books. Think I will. But no more today.