In what is grandly called my study, previously known as the playroom and before that the back bedroom, I am carefully selecting small portions of my life and dispatching them to the recycling bin. I have so many books that four weeks ago, before the decorators arrived, a removal firm was called in to box them up and take them into storage. Now the paint is dry they are back, but some of them have to go.

Throwing away NCTJ Teeline Gold Standard for Journalists: from Beginner to 100 Wpm with Essential Speed Building and Exam Practice is not a problem, and the Guide to French Hotels 1999 is tossed out without a second thought, but there are thousands of others that are close to my heart.

Books are my disease; a sickness I have passed on to my children and one I was afflicted with more than 50 years ago by my father, a printer of comics. Every Friday he would come home from work with a rolled up bundle that included the Beano, Dandy, Topper, Beezer, the Victor and the Rover, and even the Bunty and the Judy. I must be one of the few men who can name the surnames of the Four Marys, a group of boarding school girls whose adventures graced the pages of the Bunty.

The disease was voracious and one that was fed by the local council. Every Tuesday and Thursday a mobile library rolled up into the grounds of a school at the bottom of the road and opened its doors. We were allowed four books at a time and couldn't get enough. There was no proper library in our part of Wythenshawe in south Manchester because the council estate had only just been built and homes and schools were more important.

A few years later there was a real library with reading tables and librarians who said "shush" in the time-honoured fashion. Libraries were omnipresent, like tap water, washdays on Monday and park attendants who shouted at children. Like woodlands and forests.

Last week the list of the most borrowed authors from public libraries was published and seven of the top 10 authors were the writers of children's fiction. The large volume of children's authors continues the upward trend of recent years for kids' fiction to be the dominant force. The Public Lending Right, which monitors the books borrowed from public libraries, said almost 80% of five to 10-year-olds used municipal libraries.

But for how much longer? Log on to falseeconomy.org.uk and check the interactive map which details the hundreds of libraries across the country that are being closed; almost certainly there will be one near you.

The libraries are being shut by the local councils because the money they receive from national government is being cut. The argument, a good one, goes that it is better than cutting social services, school funding or looking after the elderly.

There are groups across the country protesting against their councils' decisions, but the outcry is piecemeal. Unlike the mass uprising against the sell-off of the woodlands, which forced the minister to publicly apologise for her mistake, there is no pressure on central government.

How can we get the communities minister, Eric Pickles, to admit it is his fault that libraries are closing, and that our children are being denied a glorious and life-improving addiction?