They are stacked against the newel post at the foot of the stairs. Wedged onto bowed shelves in every bedroom. Boxed up in the attic.
We have too many books in the house, and I am to blame.
The most pathetic accumulation might be the three piles on the table next to my side of the bed — a space that for most normal people holds a few books that they expect to pick up in the next month or so, but in my case has become a warehouse for reading material that I bought last week as well several years ago. Sometimes I worry that late-night seismic activity will leave me buried.
I have in idle moments longed to be sentenced to house arrest for a few months, perhaps for refusing to reveal an anonymous source or something similarly high-minded, simply in order to make a dent in my backlog.
And yet I continue to bring books home. I try to comfort my wife by reminding her that other husbands are addicted to methamphetamine or gambling, or to zapping out pictures of their genitals via social media.
I know I have a problem.
And yet there I was, stalking the shelves of the new Northshire Bookstore on Broadway in Saratoga Springs. A week into its soft opening, the two-story shop was packed with Sunday afternoon browsers.
If you love bookstores, it was a scene to lift your heart: Customers were picking up the stock, lingering over pages, jockeying for position as they shuffled from one shelf to the next, talking in low whispers about books they had loved, hated or looked forward to taking a chance on.
It's a cliche to say that these are dark days for brick-and-mortar book retailers, which in recent decades have followed a road to doom previously traveled by record stores: First the big ones eat the little ones, then the Internet starves the survivors out of existence.
Consider the state of Barnes & Noble, the nation's last remaining big fish after the demise of Borders, which used to have a mammoth store a block up Broadway from Northshire's new location. Last month, B&N announced the departure of CEO William Lynch, who championed the development of the chain's Nook e-reader, intended as a challenger to the Kindle and iPad. Financial analysts expect to hear more bad news on Tuesday, when the company reports its quarterly results.
As in the case of music and DVD retailers, bookstores have to contend with the fact that online sites can in most cases sell the product cheaper and, if you so desire, in a format that won't pile up on your bedside table. Bookstores are particularly vulnerable to the behavior known as "showrooming," in which consumers use brick-and-mortar stores to sample and examine products, then go home (or merely pull out their phone) and buy them online.
So far, I have managed to talk myself out of buying a tablet or e-reader. I spend enough time staring at a screen, thanks. And while I love my iPhone, I would no sooner read an entire book on it than I would attempt to eat fried chicken through a straw.
This is not to disparage tablet consumers, who tell me that the devices help them read more stuff. (Perhaps you're reading this column on such a device.) I was almost jealous of them last winter as I plowed through the latest volume of Robert Caro's life of Lyndon Johnson, a thick book that challenged my singular love of reading-and-walking. The Nook, in contrast, weighs less than my wallet.
Friends with e-readers brag to me about carrying more than a thousand titles wherever they go. To me, this digital plenitude is a hurdle, not an advantage. I want to make my selection at the bookstore or library; I do not want to haul either home with me.
The pleasure of the printed book, a comfort that becomes keener as our lives become more screen-addled, emerges from its unitary format: We are reading one thing, which enables us for a few hours to switch off everything else, whether rendered in pixels or print.
I should probably talk to a professional about my book problem. She might tell me that I value the cairns of books piled around the house not for the stories or information they contain, but because each represents a packet of unobstructed future time.
Which is another way of saying I might be trying to convince myself I'll live long enough to read everything in the house. I should be so lucky.
Perhaps I'll save my therapy money, and invest in a few more vertical inches of paper.
cseiler@timesunion.com • 518-454-5619