It's not Book Sale's fault to set up branches near my home and near my mom's salon. It isn't Starbucks' fault that I feel obligated to fill up my promo card with stickers, thus making it a fundamental requirement to stop at every Book Sale branch in Festival Mall (there are two).
Today I paid for two books. An early book by Roddy Doyle, whose sensibilities I've heard and read about and really love mostly because he's Irish. The other is a brief memoir by a relatively new author, Amy Fusselman. The latter is lauded by David Eggers, Zadie Smith and Rosie O'Donnel. I'm not a fan of all of Rosie O'Donnel's work (maybe I misunderstand her), and I haven't read David Eggers or Zadie Smith although I know who they and how stellar they are.
So there lies my problem. I have over 400 titles in my personal library (a weak estimate), more than half of them bought at second hand bookstores like Book Sale.
I have a love affair with Book Sale. This love affair has already reached the same level as an addiction: it's an embarrassing. A few years ago, I would try to hide my newly purchased books from my parents but they'd wonder at why my bag looks like it's stuffed to point of bursting. They do not wonder simultaneously about where my growing collections of books are coming from. Friends tend to take secrets in better than parents, but I must have stretched the limits of their understanding. I saw two other books that bear similar affinities (blurbs by literary notables) and I had them reserved for pick up tomorrow. I should stop. My manfriend thinks the world of me, and he knows that I have a crap load of books. He might say just call it crap anytime now.
"I can't help it" isn't an excuse, and a lame one, if ever executed in my defense. What's even more lame is that I'm such a restless and slow reader. As much as I love books and reading, I can't sit still sometimes and if the action is picking up or if I'm getting affected by the way events are unfolding against a character's knowlege, I need to pull over and stop.
Right now, I'm reading a fantasy by Charles de Lint. Again, I was sold on the blurb Marion Zimmer Bradley, whose Mists of Avalon, Firebrand, and Lady if Avalon I have on my shelves but haven't read yet.
This kind of obesity is better than overeating, which is what I'm thankful for. Of all the vices I have chosen, I chose a timid kind of entertainment that requires nothing of me but a harnessed attention and an active imagination. Those things shouldn't be hard to conjure. Now that I should tell myself.
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