"…ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them. So I have erected one of his dwellings, with books as the building stones, before you, and now he is going to disappear inside, as is only fitting." -Walter Benjamin, "Unpacking My Library"
 
Last weekend, I found myself killing a Saturday afternoon at one of my favorite bookstores, McNally Jackson. I didn't go with any specific book in mind. I walked out with four books: Stoner, A Meaningful Life, A Fan's Notes, and The Intuitionist.
 
This past weekend, I found myself killing a Saturday afternoon in Brooklyn, at what's becoming one of my favorite bookstores, Book Thug Nation. I didn't go with any specific book in mind. But they had this Dell edition of The Circus in the Attic, complete with green gilding, for $1 and they had this edition of Wise Blood, which you can't find anywhere and is far prettier than this ugly thing. I walked out with those two books, as well as Knockemstiff and The Castle in the Forest.
 
Depending on how you feel about books, you could call this either a habit of mine or a problem of mine. Either way, one thing it is is a pattern, something that repeats itself, that exists in its very repetition, that manifests itself on the bookshelf in my apartment and, because it's a long-lived pattern, in piles seven and eight tall on the floor of my bedroom.   MORE