The wrongness of rationing reading

One of the things that I know my Mum found difficult about my childhood is that my brother and I are both avid readers, to the point where we could often be found reading when we should have been sleeping/getting dressed/brushing our teeth/almost anything, forcing Mum to tell us to stop reading and do whatever it was we were supposed to be doing. As a teacher, I know it didn't come naturally to her to actively discourage such an edifying pursuit, and I'm sure that in amongst the frisson of annoyance, there was at least a little pride at the fact that one of my most dramatic episodes of misbehaviour as a child was burning a hole in my mattress with an anglepoise lamp whilst reading after lights out.

When we're at home, I always have a selection of books waiting to be read and whenever I feel as though I'm running low, there are several charity shops where I can find something suitable to replenish the supply. Whilst on the road however, my options are somewhat more limited - the books I brought with me were all finished before we left New York, and although we've been replenishing them relatively frequently, I find myself baulking at the prospect of paying full price for books, particularly as I hate to part with any books I have read (part OCD-like tendencies, part the fact that I occasionally remember almost the whole plot of a book except for some crucial piece of information and have to find it and read it again to get it out of my head), and I know that I won't be able to take months' worth of books home with me, so will be forced to abandon them here and then possibly buy them again once we're back home.

All this means that I am trying to limit the amount I read, which doesn't come naturally to me and given that I am in the habit of reading a lot, it's hard to switch of the automatic response to pick up a book. So, today I have scoured the internet for a suitable second hand bookshop and have located on which claims to have 35,000 books in store, so hopefully we can head off there tomorrow and see what they can offer in the way of cheap, interesting books.