Eaton Hamilton

My name is Jane and I am a bookaholic. 

The 12 Steps:

1. We admitted we were powerless over books – that our shelves had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that no bookbinder could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will away from bookstores.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of our shelves.
5. Admitted to ourselves and to another human being how many of our books we hadn’t actually read.
6. Were entirely ready to have friends remove all these books.
7. Made a list of all authors we had harmed by not getting their books, or having them sign a book we didn’t read, and became willing to make amends to them all by reading their volumes before buying again.
8. Made direct amends to authors wherever possible, writing them flattering letters etc, except when to do so would drop a pile of books on their foot.
9. Made a list of all our loved ones we alienated by depleting our financial, work and sleep reserves on books.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were reading too much promptly admitted it.
11. Sought to improve our conscious contact with old books, praying only for the power to carry them all, especially when moving.
12.  Having lain awake with insomnia as the result of not reading in bed, we carried this message to readers everywhere.  Perhaps we were a little cranky and wild-haired when we did so, and perhaps no one wanted to hear about it, but what the hell, we bought a book to cheer ourselves up.