#20 - The Library

Anyone who knows me well or has even just been over to my apartment knows that I am a collector. I have way too many books, DVDs, CDs, bottles of wine, baseball cards, kitchen gadgets, etc. This explains most of the balances that I might have on any credit cards. It is a habit that I have been able to beat most of the time, due to the fact that we don't have as much money to spend on stuff like that. That, and I made myself aware of the whole psychology of buying things to make you feel better, and I came to terms with that.

Now, if I want a CD, I usually try to obtain it in an mp3 format rather than buying the whole CD, unless it is a band that I really like and want to support. I don't but as many DVDs anymore, only because I realized that I rarely watch the ones I do own, and many of my favorite TV shows are available in syndication or online. Baseball cards - well, I just don't have the patience or the disposable income that I used to have. Kitchen gadgets - people bought us enough of those for the wedding (except for the 10 inch chef's knife, which really would just be superfluous anyway). As for the wines, well, our collection is dwindling a little bit because we are starting to drink some of the ones that we have been cellaring.

That just leaves books as my biggest vice in terms of unnecessary money spent for something to sit around the apartment and collect dust. It doesn't help that I have a ridiculous amount of books from grad school already, but any time I want a book I usually just went to Borders. And why not? We live in the town that invented Borders, and then they put one about 200 yards from my front door. We get coupons weekly via email. Buying too many books isn't a new thing either - when I was younger, I had a quest to get all the Hardy Boys books. When I was in elementary school, I even started to catalog the books I owned in a card catalog type system, because I was a sad lonely nerd.

In the same way that the internet has halted my CD and DVD buying ways, the library card we got a couple of months back has done the same for my book purchasing. It is awesome - especially for some crappy Dean Koontz books that I can read in a week, I can just check them out and return them. They even have DVDs at the library, but I haven't made it that far yet. But it is all free, it is something that has been there forever, and I took advantage when I was at the university, but I just didn't anymore. It is so simple that it is stupid that it took me this long to get the library card.

Here is my one problem with the library, and I don't mean the creepy-ass people who go to the library - I sort of, in a really strange way, fetishize the books. For instance, I never crack the spine, and try not to bend the corners of the cover in any way. If it is a hard cover book with a jacket, I tend to take off the jacket of the book as to not scuff or bend it. I spilled a little wine on our Wine Bible recently, and considered just buying a new one even though the copy was still completely usable. I am usually hesitant to lend out my books - it is all strange and OCD, you get the point. Well, the library books are usually pretty grungy. Like, who has sneezed on the cover of this thing? What nasty floor did it rest on? What is the fleck on dirt between these pages - is it a booger? I don't know - I try not to think about these things, but I am happy when the book I check out is newer looking.

Also, renting a book is like renting a movie, but the movie takes so much less time to watch. I have one book that I have renewed 5 times but not yet returned because I am not reading it cover to cover. It is more of a reference style book on wines with a bunch of essays. Normally, having a set amount of time to read a book would bother me, but now you can renew your books online without ever having to go up to the library. The whole system is perfect. I mean, except for the germy covers.

Quick note on this - we were in Meijer about a month before we got the library card, and I put a copy of Michael Crichton's Next in the basket. Carrie made the point that it was the type of book I should just get a library card and check out, so I put the book back. Well, when we got the card, the first book I checked out was Next, and after I read about a third of it, I realized that the book was terrible. Like, something happened involving some parrot talking to a woman followed up by some guy rescuing a money-man hybrid made from his own DNA that they started to dress up like a kid. No seriously, it was that bad. And I usually like the Crichton, but this was terrible. I am glad I kept the $8 that day at Meijer.