bibliophilism

"Now and then Fox feels agitated for reasons unknown. It causes him to throw stones or break tree limbs to no purpose. He runs along the beach to kick up sprays of shell like a mischevious child and he yells until his throat is sore. He still can't believe that he's managed to arrive here without a single book. He revisits every opportunity on the road, considers the poetry volumes crammed into old Bess's caravan. He thinks wistfully of every novel he's ever turned his nose up at or given up on, every hyphenated Englishman and triple-barrelled American who's ever put him to sleep. Come home Gertrude Stein and Jean-Paul Sartre--all is forgiven. Fox would content himself with a phone book, a shopping list."
--Tim Winton, Dirt Music