«The Bibliomania» by Peter Roget

What wild desires, what restless torments seize

The hapless man, who feels the book disease….

Like Poets, born, in vain Collectors strive

To cross their Fate, and learn the art to thrive..

The tyrant-passion drags them backward still:

Ev’n I, debarr’d of ease, and studious hours,

Confess, mid’ anxious toil, its lurking pow’rs.

Peter Roget

Peter Roget lived his whole life writing lists of words.  The result of his work: Roget’s Thesaurus.  At the end of his life he amassed a library of some 4,100 volumes.

I have hundreds of books and some (most) of them are waiting to be read.  Being a bibliomaniac is one of the sweetest of diseases.  On Reason!