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Should I be concerned if I consider myself a compulsive book buyer?

When Japanese order guru Marie Kondo recommended having no more than 30 books in the house a few years ago, book lovers were shocked. For these people, the private and personal library it’s a fundamental part of life, and generally the bigger that collection of books, the better.

What a summer of tsundoku (books you buy and never read)

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Indeed, having books at home is tinged with positive connotations. There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with that. However, it can happen that at some point a person feels that he is going too far, that maybe I bought too many booksand you suspect that your desire to own more and more volumes has gotten out of control.

That “loss of control” was a problem identified in Europe in the 19th century, when there were many cases of people obsessed with that accumulation. was called bibliomaniawhich literally means “book madness””.

It is not currently officially considered a disorder: it is not part of the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” (DSM-5). But it is considered a possible symptom hoarding disorder or obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).

Problems of accumulating too many books

How many books are too many? How can a person realize if he is becoming a compulsive book buyer? As with other disorders (compulsive shoppers are estimated to account for more than 7% of the population), the tendency to buy and hoard books becomes a problem when it interferes with daily life.

Among the main damages generated by hoarding disorders are space problems. If books start to take up too much space (often not only on special shelves, but also stacked on top of other furniture or on the floor), they can make moving around difficult and even make entire rooms unusable.

Also, books stacked in the wrong places can do that generate falls or other domestic accidents, especially when the elderly live at home. Furthermore, the presence of large quantities of paper greatly increases the risk of fire.

Too many accumulated volumes can also damage hygiene and health. On the one hand because they accumulate a lot of dust; on the other, due to the number of parasites they attract, from mites also rats or other rodents. All of this creates a significant risk of allergies, respiratory problems or infections.

You should also take into account the economic problems that can result from this obsession. Spending too much money on books can lead a person to neglect other aspects of their life and even put their economic or financial situation at risk.

If such effects occur, the person in question may have become a compulsive book buyer, such as a form of hoarding disorder, or OCD.

Don’t confuse bibliophilia with bibliomania

It is clear, of course, that the simple pleasure of buying books is not a problemespecially for those who can do it without causing economic, spatial, hygienic or other setbacks in their daily lives.

In fact, voracious readers tend to buy more books than they can read. The Japanese word ‘tsundoku’ refers to the habit of buying books knowing they won’t be read right away, but will go into the mountain of books that will have to wait. But that in itself is not a problem either.

not to be confused bibliophile with bibliomania. Bibliophilia is “the love of books” (this is its etymological meaning), and is mostly used to refer to those who are particularly fascinated by rare, hard-to-find volumes, first editions, copies of incunabula, etc.

In general, the bibliophile is similar to the collector: he has his library in order, he is proud of it and enjoys exhibiting his “jewels” to others. The bibliomaniac, on the other hand, usually has no order: his books are piled up everywhere.

Also, to the bibliomaniac he doesn’t mind having repeated titles or multiple copies of the same edition. On the contrary: he has a hard time getting rid of the volumes and – just like hoarders – gets angry if someone else enters his house and discards the books as useless.

For the same reasons, for the bibliomaniac reading books is not important: the fundamental thing is to accumulate them. Another trait is that she tries to hide her obsession with him, which is why she tends not to let anyone into her house. On many occasions, this leads her to have family conflicts and to be left in a situation of social isolation.

Bibliomania in the age of the electronic book?

It could be assumed that the advent of the electronic book would come eradicate the risk of bibliomania. When, between 2006 and 2007, first Sony and then Amazon launched the first ‘e-readers’ on the market, experts predicted that in a decade the sale of digital books would surpass that of paper books in the United States.

Three decades later, however, digital books they represent only 25% of the total of copies sold in that country. In Spain, the figures are much lower: share of digital books barely reaches 6.3%In his opinion ‘Digital book annual report‘ Published last year by the Libranda company.

And this despite – according to the same source – in the period 2019-2021, due to the confinement due to the COVID-19 pandemic, digital reading grew by 43% in our country. The paper book is in excellent health: almost in Spain 20,000 copies printed hourly.

One of the keys to the validity of hard copies lies in finding a digital detox”: Since so much work, study, and leisure time require staring at a screen, many people are choosing to read the medium differently.

A reveals it poll made this year among 2,400 book readers living in the US, UK, Germany and France. 65% preferred the physical book, against 21% of e-books and 14% of audiobooks. A surprising figure was that in the age group between 16 and 24 the preference for the physical book was even higher: 70%.

What to do against bibliomania

Since, as noted, compulsive book-buying is considered a symptom of hoarding disorder, or OCD, possible solutions should follow the same guidelines as for these issues.

In general, the most effective treatments include cognitive behavioral therapy. If other problems such as anxiety or depression are also present (which are not uncommon in people with these disorders), your doctor may prescribe specific medications to relieve them.

A common difficulty in such cases is getting the person to do it suppose you have a problem. This can be more expensive due to the aforementioned positive connotations that having books in the house acquires in our society.

The key is to make the patient understand the discomforts that this excess of material objects is generating and to understand that the best thing for his life will be to resolve them.

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