Why Do I Keep Buying Books?

I know I'm not the only one doing this. You have like twenty-three unread books on your shelves, waiting for you to pick them up. You have a stack of books you're in the middle of on your nightstand the size of your head. And yet, you go to four bookstores in a day. . .

You buy a bunch of books, even though you have zero time to read and a million other books to get to first. It doesn't matter though because pretty spines and pages and ugh, books.

I finally have Emerald Green and The Rising - now the Gathering trilogy and the Ruby Red trilogy are complete on my shelves. I've already read Hex Hall and The Darkest Part of the Forest, but I wanted my own copies. . . I've also heard really good things about Die For me.

The notebook is one of those fancy ones with metal clasps and pretty textured pages that you get at chain bookstores. I actually just bought a new sketchbook a few weeks ago, so I'm using this one as a journal.

And yeah, I went to four bookstores the other day. Two of them were chains - two different Coles outlets in two different malls. The other two were used bookstores. That copy of the Darkest Part of the Forest, which is brand new, was 3 dollars at my favourite used bookstore. The hardcover of Die For Me was seven bucks at another, which is a pretty decent price considering it would be around twenty bucks in a chain store.

I don't know what the deal is in my city with all these great brand new books popping up in the used stores, but I think some teens out there must have really cool relatives who are buying them cool books for holidays, and they're pawing them to the bookshops to get cash. Which they probably spend on weed, since this is Saint John. Which means I get to find a bunch of cool books for good prices. To be honest, I'll take books over weed any day. You can convince one of your friends to light you up - you can't just convince someone to hand you a good paranormal romance for cheap, though. #booklogic.

One of the things I love about used bookshops is seeing all the love on the books, too, in the cracks in the spines and the folds in the corners of the pages. I like feeling the echo of another reader on a book while I'm reading it.

The thing is if I buy any more books, I'm gonna need to get new shelves. I never thought I'd fill all these up, because my room has shelves built into the walls, but here we are. I need a new shelf. My dad has one out in his double-garage that he said he'd give me, because obviously not getting more books in not an option for me. I'm like a dragon, hoarding gold, but the gold is actually trashy romance novels and I'm a big nerd.

I have to wait until he's done adding an extra shelf to it, though, because one of the original three broke off. But once that's done, I'll be on my way to total world domination, obviously.