This strange disease afflicts so many of us from the inner-city to the far-flung outposts, like Reg Thomson most of us could hardly imagine a life lived without books:
My earliest memories of my father are permeated by books. They were an integral part of the daily rhythms of his life. Books arrived constantly in boxes or cardboard sleeves, by ship and by air to our tropical outpost [in Papua New Guinea]; they were forever being stacked or rearranged in hall cupboards as protection against the ubiquitous threats of pests and damp. During his waking hours he was happiest musing over book catalogues or perusing the literary gold within his latest acquisition. It was a highly infectious affliction that he willingly passed on to his son. [Looking for a Good Book] is his ‘tale of a gentle madness’, written by my father during his sixties and seventies, the story of a book collector thrown hither and thither by tumultuous events beyond his control.
