Abibliophobia

I receive a daily e-mail called "Word of the Day" from yourdictionary.com, which - as you might suspect from the name - provides a new word every day to enrich ones vocabulary. Many of the words are so obscure and archaic that they aren't very useful in most instances, but even some of those can be very interesting and descriptive.

Like this past Friday's word: abibliophobia, defined as "the morbid fear of running out of reading material."

This is a word that resonates in our family, and with some of our friends. But actually running out of reading material is something I actually don't have to fear: a week doesn't go by in which we don't buy at least two or three books of one kind or another. The situation was bad enough for years, but when my mother passed away six years ago, I inherited most of her substantial library on top of my own...and I've now got such a backlog of unread books that I'll probably have to live to be 150 to read them all...assuming that new books stopped being published immediately.

So in reality, aibibliophobia is a fear I really don't need. The world has plenty enough things in it for me to worry about without tacking on one that's really not an issue. As my mother always used to tell us, "As long as you have a book, you have a friend."

And right now, I think I'll go and visit with my latest friend, the last Harry Potter story.

Have a good day. Read all you can...your brain needs food, too.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo