I live in the first circle

Not of Hell. Though in Dante's Inferno, I'd be in good company because this is where all the Greek and Arabic philosophers dwell - all those who haven't sinned but weren't Christian and therefore can't be saved. Saladin's there, as are the Hebrew figures from the Old Testament and of course, unbaptized babies.

No, apparently I qualify for the first circle of bookbuyers who are saving publishers from the worst of the economic crash. According to the Literary Review, for which my parents gave me a subscription for Christmas,

First-circle book buyers are stubborn in their habits. The largest proportion of them are women over thirty, and they are the chief sustainers of the fiction market. On average, first-circle readers buy up to twenty books a year, and if there is a twenty-first or a twenty-second that takes their fancy, they will buy that too. If they really like a book they buy multiple copies of it to give as presents.

Now apart from being a woman (and let's face it, life takes us to strange places so let's not rule it out yet), I fit most of this bill. I've bought a lot of copies of Thoreau's Walden for people in my time, I'm over 30 (hard to believe, looking at my angelic, youthful complexion) and I buy … oh, more than 20 per year. It's 105 so far this year which is just over one per day, not including books bought for other people.

So OK, you could, as Laura has done, describe this as a disease, or an addiction (thanks Neal), but I prefer to see it as a) doing my economic and literary duty and b) saving the environment by insulating my hovel. They make me happy too. Except for the ones which depress me (pretty much anything on politics and the environment: we are clearly all going to die slowly, miserable and avoidably because we'd all rather stick our fingers in our ears, shout la-la-la and then drive our SUVs to the airport for a weekend break - if that's you, kill yourself. I mean that, you selfish, evil, poisoning bastards).