Loose Ends

Me: I’ve got my chores done. House is clean. I’m supervising the boys playing and baking cookies so I can’t focus to write.

First Reader: I’m going to suggest something radical. Reading. Pleasure reading. How about the crime book by Sayers you just bought?

See, I was naughty on my way home from work Friday. My daily commute takes me past the Dollar Book Swap, and I ration my visits. That place is dangerous to the wallet, even if all the books are only a dollar. I mean…

It’s a warehouse, quite literally. They buy books by the ton, I think, then sort here in this vast space. The photo only shows a tiny part of it.

Some books go on to be sold on Amazon. Books that aren’t worth listing there are sold here, where there are some ten thousand books available to buy. Children’s picture books can be had in bulk. CDs and DVDs are also available. I go for the books, most often.

Yesterday I’d had a bad week. I set a mental budget, and a time budget. Both were important! You see, if I don’t, I could lose myself in there.

I usually make a beeline for the very back, and hit the antique books. See, these do not sell at all well on Amazon, so I find some very interesting things on the shelves. At least interesting to me! Like Robert Service’s Ballads of a Bohemian, written in Paris in 1914. He includes little notes about people and places and you can see the umbral creep of the Great War nearing…

I’ll often find books that are almost art, but even I am not so enamored of paper as to buy books simply for their art value on display. So this series in German (and that title was made into a movie, I just learned) stayed at the store.

I stayed under my self-imposed time budget of thirty minutes in the store. I did break my mental budget of $7, spending $10 when I found those three Kiplings just before hitting the checkout counter. But I couldn’t pass up century-ok’d Kipling, especially not travel memoirs I don’t already have!

Come to think of it, it’s a darn good thing I’m at loose ends for a while today. I have books to enjoy!

If you’re ever in the Dayton OH area you will want to stop in and explore. There’s so much. You could spend days there! I shared photos on social media and got told it looks like heaven. If you love books and especially cheap ones, perhaps it is. It’s a treasure hunt every time I go, which isn’t nearly as often as I want to, but restraint means…

I walk in the door with two bags of books.

First Reader: More books? You realize we are going to need two trucks when we move?

Me: …

First Reader: Just because we have space on the bookshelves doesn’t mean you need to fill them up.

Me: I’ll come home and get you before my next trip, love.