There’s something else in my life starting with B that is as much of an obsession as beer – and that’s books. It’s been an obsession ever since I was a kid – I remember getting my first library card the way other people remember getting their driver’s licence.

The photo above is a good illustration of that obsession. These shelves are my “to read” shelves – the books I’ve bought but haven’t gotten around to reading yet. I counted them last week and there are 201 books there.

But that’s not the only “to read” shelves in the house. There’s another one downstairs holding a further 67 books I still haven’t read yet.

So that’s 268 books I have bought but haven’t read. So there’s absolutely no rational reason I should need to buy any more, right? Doesn’t stop me – I bought six in the last week alone. And there’s every chance I’ll buy more in the few days between me writing this and it appearing on the website.

If I read one a week (a realistic average for me) that’s about five years’ worth of reading I’ve got. So it’s pretty clear I will die with a load of unread books on my shelves.

Which is perfectly fine with me. Who wants to shuffle off this mortal coil having read everything?

This isn’t about beer at all. What gives?: Well, like most beer geeks, I have other interests too. Like books. And from time to time I’d thought of how I’d like to write about something other than beer, but figured it wouldn’t work. But then I saw Luke at Ale of a Time start writing about non-beer stuff on a beer blog and thought, “screw it, I’m writing about books as well” . And so here we are.