My Personal Library

I am cheap. So cheap that I maybe buy a book at full price once a year. Maybe. And then it is probably a paperback. I used to consider it a splurge to buy a book at Costco. However, I am such a reader, that I sometimes read a few books a week. Here's how I do it: Often I steal. Sometimes I borrow. Occasionally I buy, but only if it is for less than three dollars.

I find that once people read books that they have purchased, they are pretty much done. They don't go back to their shelves often to look for stuff. Or if they do, they don't know to ask me, the perpetrator.

My two early but still fruitful sources of book stealing have been my parents. Rather than send me to jail their little hearts burst with pride when they realize their baby is reading all their old favorites.

I regularly peruse the bookshelves in my father's basement for castoffs from my stepsiblings' high school career I got my Guide to Birds of North America that way, the uber boring Guns Germs and Steel, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (worth going to jail for). They probably think I am doing them a service by decluttering; or perhaps they wonder why my purse is always so square and heavy like a sack of bricks when I leave their house. I don't ask.

Another excellent way to feed the addiction is by borrowing. From the LIBRARY duh. Also from my friend Stimey's library. At any given time I have like six of her books, and now in her basement I have a few shelves of my returns. I like to visit and see what I've read; its like visiting old friends. The best thing about Stimey's library is that there are no late fees. Plus, she is so silly that she actually purchases new books. I think at full price. Silly Stimey. This way I get my dose of current fiction, so that I am not so hopelessly out of date as to poke my curling iron in the fire and potentially burn off some of my hair.

One (several) of Stimey's books have actually traveled to other countries in the backpack of my brother who is apparently also a professional book stealer. T-- I am still waiting for Skeletons of the Zahara to come back so I can read it and return it to Stimey.

Another great place to get books almost for free, is from the Library used book store. This way you get to keep your library book forever. Conveniently there is one in a branch close to me. I get obscure cookbooks there, classics all full of pencil notes from college students, and confusingly still barcoded and mylar wrapped hardback fiction for a dollar.


One way that I make sure that my own personal library is not depleted is that I mark the books I lend out with my name. Sometimes in Sharpie. On the cover. Don't take my book you book stealers. I know all your tricks.