My name is Alexis and I am a bibliophile

Today I was moderately productive! I went to the transit centre to acquire an Orca card (they're bus cards that you put money on, so you don't have to use cash, kind of like Japanese train cards), then I spent almost two hours in Barnes & Noble. I didn't buy anything because everything I wanted was outrageously expensive and I refuse to spend $15 on a paperback, but I spent part of that time in the cafe with coffee and my Moleskine, scribbling writing notes for when I conquer my listlessness enough to actually sit down and write something marginally coherent. And, anyway, time spent in a bookstore is never time wasted.

Then I came home, took a look at my books (which, for the record, are kept in... 7 different places because they don't fit properly), and decided to go through them and pull out ones I can do without. So now I have a bag full of books that I'm going to take to Half-Price books and attempt to sell. Someone else will have more use for Red Star Over China than I will at this point, I'm sure. The bag contains a mix of fantasy novels I'm not keen on anymore, books I inexplicably have two copies of, books I never really liked to begin with, and school-related books I didn't sell back for whatever reason.

I also discovered, in the process of going through my bookcase, shelves, and drawers full of books, that I have a lot of philosophy and poetry. And a good 15-20 books I've never read. I think I just compulsively buy them, then get an emotional attachment and agonize over whether I can bear to part with them, whether I've read them or not. It's like this voice in the back of my mind goes, "But you might want to read them later and then where will you be?" Absolutely ridiculous. Which is why I'm forcing myself to part with about two dozen.

Anyway, at the end of my book-sorting adventure, I discovered that I will be returning to Salem with more books than I brought with me. To begin with, I can't very well leave The Complete Sherlock Holmes because I'm only a third of the way through, but I also can't leave the two books I brought and haven't finished. Then there's Slaughterhouse-5, which I know I'll be reading for my Apocalyptic lit class and don't want to have to buy again, and Catch-22, which I've been half-way through for the last eternity. I also need to bring my literary theory book from sophomore year because I know I'll need it for my English classes. I did last semester, anyway, and didn't have it. I intend to avoid that issue this time around.

In conclusion? Maybe I should read the books I already have before buying more. It would save money and cut down on my owning books I don't even remember buying to begin with.

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Books of 2010, as of 6 January
1. The Sign of Four - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
2. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle