Greed

I just confirmed with someone I barely know that I will be able to buy approximately one hundred books for one hundred dollars. The person in question is moving to London and selling their library, most of which has already been bought. I get the remains, but having looked at a list of titles, they are good leftovers. I will do this in a day or so, even though I don’t really have the money to spend. God knows I will not read any of them for a long, long time. I have to finish Musil’s The Man Without Qualities and Dubravka Ugresic’s Thank You For Not Reading before the summer is over, so I can start the fall semester of full time classes without being in the middle of other texts.

I don’t need these books but a deal like this is rare. I’m jumping on it, feeling fully justified in my actions. After all, these books would cost considerably more at a new bookstore. Then again, I wouldn’t have thought to buy them. It’s like the joke about a sale: “Look how much I saved by buying this on sale!” says the person holding the superfluous widget.

I know the truth. I am only buying these books because I don’t want someone else to have them. It burns me that someone already bought a part of this library. Someone beat me to it! How dare they! The titles are unimportant (even if I don’t like some I can always sell them, I tell myself, which, of course, I won’t ever do), what matters is that I will be surrounded by 100 more books that I can look at and say, “Mine, Mine MINE!” This greed for books is starting to make me broke, not to mention worried. I want these because someone else might get them if I don’t. I am the child who will break a toy rather than share it.