I'm always reading, sometimes for pleasure, sometimes for work, sometimes just because I'm compulsive.

I find I can't eat without a newspaper, or at the very least a printed paper napkin with some words on it. If I don't have that I'll read the orange juice carton. I'll read the label on the espresso machine. What does REG US PAT OFF mean, anyway?

I read menus, the fine print on warranty cards, any old thing, the wrapping on toilet paper rolls. I can't help it. My wife reads road signs out loud while we're driving -- it's kind of soothing. There's that old Bartley Pump sign! Airport Road! Merging Traffic! In Europe she said things like Ospedale! and Office de Tourisme! ... I married a talking odometer.

Yes, I'm a compulsive reader. I'm also a concurrent reader. No doubt many of you also have between four and fourteen novels and other books going at the same time.

Right now I am on page 41 of Carl Hiaasen's hilarious new novel, Sick Puppy. I'm also on page 27 of Terry Pratchett's hilarious new novel, The Fifth Elephant. I'm all the way through Brendan O'Carroll's hilarious new novel, The Chisellers. I'm also reading Used and Rare, Travels in the Book World by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone. According to my tattered bookmark I'm now on page 59.

Those are the books I'm currently reading. Other books lean on shelves or sit in stacks all over the house.

Here's a book I first planned to read in 1985, the year it was published. It's California Currents, An Exploration of the Ocean's Pleasures, Mysteries and Dilemmas by Marie De Santis, who used to work on fishing boats out of Noyo Harbor, back when there actually were a lot of small fishing boats working out of Noyo Harbor.

A copy of California Currents arrived in the mail this week from Alden Books in State College, PA. They acquired the book as a discard from the Mifflin County Library, and now I have it again. Book collecting is another great addiction to have, by the way. It's not fattening and doesn't give you lung cancer.

For weeks I've been planning to read The Lighthouse Stevensons. It's about Robert Louis Stevenson's Scotch forebears -- who built most of the lighthouses around Scotland in the 18th and 19th centuries. Stevenson didn't go into civil engineering. He followed a woman to America instead and the rest is history -- and Treasure Island and A Child's Garden of Verses and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Kidnapped ...

Vendela in Venice is a children's picture book I want to read because we were in Venice this summer and loved it deeply. Vendela is written by Christina Bjork, author of Linnea in Monet's Garden, ANOTHER great children's book. In Vendela father and daughter spend a magical week in the city "where the streets are canals, the cars are boats, and the houses are palaces."

The Home Town Advantage by Stacy Mitchell, subtitled, How to Defend Your Main Street Against Chain Stores... And Why It Matters came free from my industry trade group, the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association. Members voted some years ago to add "independent" to the association's name, so you can imagine why this book interests us.

A stack of books about a foot high sits on the desk in front of me. I plan to savor each, then tell you about it.

Right now, however, I'm compulsively about to read a couple of music CD inserts, then look through half a dozen cookbooks for the best pumpkin soup recipe. Talk to you next week

Aired Friday November 26, 1999 at 8:35 am and Sunday November 28, 1999 at 10:55 am