About the Books

The other night I selected the most opportune time of 3 a.m. to clean house. I suppose the words "clean house" are somewhat misleading as I only cleaned off my bookshelf. I sorted the books into stacks; some were to be discarded, some were to be read, and some were objects of complete adoration. I dumped the last stack into my lap, smiling and reminiscing as I stroked each cover before finally replacing it on the shelf. During this cleaning procedure I discovered a book I received for Christmas the previous year, its title was "Top 100 Novels of All Time". I thumbed through the list, which is obviously subjective, yet I was still a dismayed that I had only read 17 of the books on the list.

The next morning I found out my mom was, coincidentally, planning to go to Half-Price books to make an exchange. Of course I decided to go with her. I picked out six books or so that were on "The List" before making my way back to the clearance section, where (be still my heart) lurked a ton of modern classics.

As I was dawdling over the shelves, a man approached my section. He seemed nervous and moved too quickly, jerking books off the shelf and roughly flipping through the pages before adding them to the stack under his arm. I disliked his intrusion into my space and began to panic, fearing he was "stealing" the good books before I could get to them. The longer he remained, the greater the enmity between us. Finally he put his stack down and I assessed his selection: Tom Clancy, Dean Koontz and (unaccountably) a singular Nicholas Sparks. Not my type of fare. My hostile feelings dissipated, replaced by a feeling of complete absurdity. I nearly laughed out loud.

I bought forty books. My shelf is crowded again.

I can't believe I just wrote such a long post about books. I am a major nerd.