It should come as no surprise to anyone who’s read this blog that I have a bit of a …problem with bookstores. Once (stupidly), I even tallied up the money I’d spent in such stores over the course of a year. Let’s just say it came frighteningly close to an entire month’s rent.
And yet, despite the fact that I buy books far more frequently than a non-robot could finish them, I’ve never come down hard on myself for this particular vice. After all, I’m not compulsively buying cheeseburgers, or Beanie Babies, or bank stocks. Even when e-readers take over and everyone converts their paperbacks into coffee tables, books don’t expire. Forty-year-old me can still curl up with a hardcover and a disproportionately large glass of wine.
For me, books are an investment. Not only in my intellectual fulfillment, and not only in guaranteed commute fodder for literally decades to come. I love reading, and so I invest in the people who make it possible. I want Jonathan Franzen to sit at home all day, ruminating on his next 600-page analysis of the 21st century marriage. I want David Sedaris to lackadaisically roam France for months on end, penning diatribes on everything from the language barrier to the mating habits of local spiders. To me, there would be nothing sadder than Don DeLillo working a day job at Starbucks. Continue reading “What Would Dickens Do?”
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