Meandering through a used book store...

There's something very exciting about going into a used book store, seeing this jumble of books with some handwritten labels (if you're lucky) and wandering around, picking up this and that, reading a chapter here, then realizing you'll be halfway through the book if you keep going and so putting it back, petting the essential used book store cat, going down aisles that you'd never be caught dead in in a Borders or Barnes and Noble... I tend to treat used book stores as a buffet of sorts, sampling here and there, wherever a title jumps out at me, and more often than not getting sucked into something totally unexpected. But for some reason I rarely buy anything. Part of it is my conditioning to not buy books unless I have a gift card, a mode of self-preservation. And partly because I can't commit. I usually only want to buy books if I absolutely love them. Which is not to say I don't have any books on my bookshelf that I never touch and tend to forget about. But I have to really want something in particular in order to buy it. Which usually happens a good while after I've read the book and realized how good it is. Otherwise, the library keeps me rather content. I'd rather read the book from there first, and then buy it when I have my holiday gift card. Except now that I've left the used book store, I kind of want that meeting with an archangel book... which title I can't exactly remember, by some author whose name I didn't bother to look at. Very helpful. Maybe being a Bookcrosser will help me get over this not buying books instinct, since I can always release the books I don't want to keep.



We're taking the class swimming at the Y tomorrow and the next two Wednesdays. This should be interesting.