You've Been Booked

Has this ever happened to you?

You frequently donate books to your local library. Some books fill holes in their local collection, but most stay in a dusty box, free to anyone who wants to take one (or more).

You go into the library to return a book, when you see a sign for a holiday book sale in the basement. It won't hurt to look, will it?

When you scan the titles in the fiction section, your head swells slightly from the fact that you've read many of these books. Maybe you should read them again? No, you have many books at home waiting to be read, some snatched from the free book box at the library.

Then you see a book that you've read and realize you donated it several weeks ago. Danger! Danger! Go look at the non-fiction section. Most of the books make you sleepy, but one, by Umberto Eco, author of The Name of the Rose, attracts your attention. It's titled  On Literature and it's a series of essays and presentations he's made over the years. You start reading it once you get home even though you're in the midst of a re-read of  Cloud Atlas.

Do you escape with a $1 purchase? What do you think? You drift back to the fiction section. You see a book by an author you've read but haven't read his latest novel. Then you see an 800-page tome you've always wanted to read but never had the chance, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. If you buy both novels and the paperback, you'll escape with a loss of $5, but a gain of three books you want to read. You will lug them around town as you do your other errands.

When you get home, Infinite Jest, your albatross, mocks you from the bookshelf. You began reading it in 2007, getting to page 50. You picked it up again two years later and started over, reading the first 200 pages. Last summer, you read through page 351. There are hundreds of pages to go, but other books call you and you can't resist.

You're booked.