Attraction is distraction. Or is it the other way around? Like so many shopaholics I can’t resist the gleaming appeal of an object, and the objects I desire most are stories, which are not tangible objects but can of course be made so, and once they are I must have them. Do you remember the part in Disney’s The Little Mermaid where Ariel has a private grotto full of junk she treasures? A conch shell; a beheaded statue of a man, thrusting a sword heroic? Like books, to Ariel these objects hold stories. Objects are so captivating, and this is why, despite owning a Kindle, I keep faithfully emptying my bank account into the cash registers of numerous Melbourne booksellers.

The pleasure of reading has, for me, expanded somewhat, given that I started a PhD this year; the come-up, as it were, of my addiction must now make room for more of itself, except that this extra consists mostly of grunt work. So much of what makes this work work is that the texts must be read without the full absorption you can surrender yourself to when reading for leisure. Research is a type of reading you cannot do in bed or on the sofa. You can’t crack the spine of research, spill coffee on it, or fall asleep with it on your chest. You can’t really make it yours until you begin to write, and so my reading practice is changing.