The other night, my husband and I took AJ to the bookstore. The bookstore has always been one of AJ�s favorite destinations. At first he was most attracted to the table of wooden trains, just his height, and the other small boys who inevitably gathered at its side. But soon he began to drift towards the rows of AJ-sized green chairs ina mystic circle near the early readers. Now it is the books themselves that draw him in. He wanders the aisles perusing the shelves until he stops, pulls a few off. Carrying them over to his favorite chair and careful not to break the spines, he begins the sentences they contain to himself.

AJ comes by his love of reading and books naturally, as both of his parents are rather compulsive about both the activity and the objects. I grew up in a house full of books, so my fate was sealed early. My husband was more of a pioneer in his literary pursuits. His interest didn�t acquire addictive status until he was became literature major in college.

As I was leaving for Seattle, my husband pressed a slender volume into my hand. �Here,� he said, �I think you should take this with you.� Knowing that having the right book for the right occasion can be the difference between pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow or even life and death, I hastily shoved the book into the outside pocket of my briefcase and departed. Later, as I sat in the O�Hare terminal waiting to board my plane, I pulled it out and began to read.

Anne Fadiman�s The Common Reader instantly felt like home. This charming set of essays describes the marriage of a couple obsessed not just with reading, but with books. I have long refused to admit that we have a book problem. And yet as Fadiman pokes fun at her own literary quirks, I find I both laugh and squirm with self-recognition. While our library has never seemed outrageous to me, it is nevertheless the object of comment by almost everyone who enters the house. Fadiman describes several aspects of her relationship to books that particularly hit home.

1. It took years before she and her husband were able to commingle their book collections. Previously they each had their own shelves. It took us several years too, and I�m not sure either of us is fully resigned to the arrangement as yet.

2. Fadiman and her husband were unable to eliminate duplicate copies of a number of books because they each had attac hments to their own volumes. This is definitely true of us. Moreover, there are several books for which at least two of the duplicate copies are mine � I have sentimental attachments to several editions of the likes of Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, and John Donne�s poetry.

3. Library organization has been a bone of contention in our house as in the Fadiman household, although the nature of the organizational conflict is slightly different. Fadiman refers to herself as a �separatist,� preferring to subdivide her collections by genre, era and region of origin, while her husband simply makes a distinction between fiction and non. Eventually they compromise with a hybrid system (essentially a reduction of Fadiman�s subdivisions). Although neither is totally happy, they unite in their mutual horror over a friend�s system of library arrangement that is governed by size and color. We are a step removed. My husband, when left to his own devices, tends toward the size and color school. He likes to put attractive hardbacks on living room shelves while hiding the unsightly paperbacks in the bedroom. I, on the other hand, tend toward Fadiman�s husband�s system. I divide my literature (which includes pop novels as well as canonized literature and even children�s fiction) into genre only � short stories, novels, plays, poetry and all is alphabetical by author within each section. Non-fiction gets more complicated. Mostly it�s alphabetical within type � lit crit, philosophy, mathematics, etc. History, however, is subdivided by region and era. Some genres (philosophy, for example) are further subdivided (classical, aesthetics, Marxism) if the quantity of books seems to warrant it. My music filing system is naturally the most elaborate, as it represents the greatest percentage of works. It is also the one area where I concede to the size and color, as some of my opera scores are huge and will not fit on most shelves in the house. I am morally opposed to lying books down flat, since it makes them harder to get at.

When we moved into our house a couple of years ago, we simply began slapping books up on shelves in order to relieve ourselves of the towering piles of boxes that threatened to crush us. We swore we�d get back to it, but somehow we never did. Currently our bookshelves (which include three in the living room, one in the kitchen, two in the family room, three in my husband�s office, three in my office and two in AJ�s room) are in a completely random arrangement overall, but each shelf is organized (more or less) according to my system. I�m sure both Fadiman and her husband would be horrified.

But at least most of the books (save the piles of recent library acquisitions on the floor around my desk) are on shelves, which is an improvement over our last living space. In our downtown loft, when we ran out of shelves, we began filling the space between the half-walls and the ceiling with the overflow. I always liked the peculiarly bookish shadows that resulted on the ceiling � I could always locate Chaucer by the unearthly red glow it threw on the ceiling when the lights were on. Our realtor, however, when we invited her over to advise us on preparing the place for sale, told us we needed to box them up immediately. �No one wants to see that many books.�

The most frequent question we get from houseguests is, �Have you read them all?� This has always struck me as an odd question. Of course we have, at least between the two of us. If we hadn�t read them, why would they be here? But more often my response is to recommend something, to slip a volume from a shelf and hand it over. For me, one of the great joys of marrying our books as well as our selves is the ready availability of things I haven�t yet read.

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