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I’m a suspicious consumer. I hate commercials, because they sell lifestyles instead of products. I avoid car salesmen like I avoid ebola. And if someone tries to up-sell me something I will often walk away completely. But when I walk into a bookstore it’s like I’m a kid visiting Charlie’s factory until the oompa loompas haul me off for trying to wear the pages of a book for clothing.
I wander from aisle to aisle with a golden glow to my eyes, staring up at the tall bookshelves, lightly caressing the planks holding up each row. I get excited about a popular book or I might even squee (let’s get this word in the dictionary) in delight over some obscure title I’ve been meaning to buy. A bookstore feels like the most comfortable place in the world to me. Sometimes I imagine that there’s a little hole somewhere in the corner of the fantasy section of Powell’s wherein I live as a Fraggle Rock muppet, so that I can be that much closer to the books. Seriously.
When it comes to books I’m a lost cause. You can put any book in my hands and I will at least read a few pages.
Which is why it is dangerous for me to enter bookstores at all. If I have my wallet, or magic plastic card, or if the store accepted Rai Stones from the Micronesian nation of Yap, it is almost a certainty that I will walk out with a book. I’ve even been known to walk out with stacks of ten or more.
How could this be a bad thing? Said books will gather dust on my shelves of over one hundred unread books. My wallet will cry foul and the wonderment and drug-like effect of the bookstore will wear off once I have left and I will realize I probably didn’t need the book. And I can’t very well take the book back. It’s mine at that point and I get a bit territorial about my books.
I do love libraries for their austere, but friendly setups and I could simply borrow a book to quell my bibliolust, but there’s something about a bookstore that inspires me. If I find a quirky little independent bookstore that feels like some antique shop where I might find the wardrobe to lead me to Narnia, then I can’t help but attach some delusional power to the books on the shelves. My eyes super-impose the image of a miniature treasure chest over-top the cardboard covers, like some artifact of old.
I’ve always allowed some romanticized version of bookstores into my view of the world and it doesn’t help that many books I read growing up encouraged that. I’m pretty good about my consumerism beyond the bookmongers, but when it comes to bookstores, I’m a slave to the page.
Do you prefer the library or a bookstore? What do you like most about a good bookstore? Do you have a favorite bookstore?
