Bookstores, Credit Cards, and Me

I love going into bookstores when I go to the local mall. It's actually almost physically impossible for me to go into the mall and not take a detour into the mall just for a few minutes. I love the smell of the bindings and the paper. (And maybe the coffee shop that sits right by the door.) It makes me feel at home to be in the bookstore.

But it's dangerous to let me in a bookstore with money. Because there's a very real possibility that I'll come out of there with a bag full of books and absolutely no money. And I literally mean no money. It's happened before. Something comes over me when I go into bookstores with money. It's like I have a compulsion to spend every penny on the written word.

If there's someone with me--like my sister for instance--it's much harder for me to do something like that. I hold on to my money, and I don't end up spending it all on books. But I usually leave the store feeling frustrated that I saw so many wonderful titles that I don't get to take home with me. It makes me sad. And being sad around books is not something I like very much.

It's a bad idea to let me anywhere near a bookstore to start with. Mostly because it's easy for me to spend hours just browsing, even if I have no money to spend. I've been known to take up residence in an aisle and start reading summaries one after the other, snapping pictures of covers so I remember to put them on my reading list. My local bookstore has a couple people who know me, so I can get away with it without getting yelled at. Much.

I'd love to have my own bookstore. But I'd never sell books. I'd loan them out to people. Borrow a book, trade a book. Share a book. But I'd read every single one that came through my doors.

That's just what kind of reader I am.