I finally finished Allison Hoover Bartlett’s 2009 tale of a serial bibliomaniac, which had threatened to take root on my nightstand. The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession is a smoothly written investigation into the world of rare books and the sometimes kooky folks who inhabit it. Rare is defined by one collector as “a book I want badly and can’t find,” and no-one wanted books more badly, or felt he deserved them more, than John Gilkey who, between 1999 and 2003, stole over $100,000 worth of collectibles and first-editions. Bartlett tracks Gilkey down on his release from prison and through a serious of interviews attempts to understand this skinny misfit in the stay-press trousers with the deferential exterior and amoral world view, and his incurable, expensive, compulsion.