With the brilliance to which he has accustomed us, Juan Bonilla recounts his long-standing, impassioned experience as a book hunter in this highly entertaining memoir.

I cannot recall a single day in which I have not looked for books. So confesses Juan Bonilla, whose book tells the tale of a passion (or a vice or a sport, bibliomania), but also or above all a way of life. This account does not seek to be a confessional or a historical essay, but rather simply a disorderly memoir, for the search for books is precisely that, disordered and happenstance. Therein lies its main allure, the knowledge that one sets out without knowing what one might find, calling on the reader to observe Nietzsche’s rule for appreciating the melody of existence: remain ever alert.

Books and bookshops, countless investigations and many related tales which go to make up, much like the volumes that comprise personal libraries, an autobiography of sorts. Like all good intentions, any goals fell by the wayside some time ago, and the desire to search is now an aim in and of itself: a library is an organism that rejects any notion of the whole and is a firm believer in the infinite. There is always one more volume to be conquered, one that lies just out of reach, not only those that pertain to the future, but also those concealed in the folds of the past.