We Waaaants It!

The Silver Fox and I must be descended from the same fathers of the fathers of the Stoors, because I often find myself thinking the very same way as him around books:

During a post-breakfast stroll about Cambridge this past Sunday I found my feet taking me down the steps to the basement stacks where the used books are shelved at the Harvard Book Store. I emerged into the sunlight an hour so later, clutching a bag with my four new purchases. “They’re used bookses precious,” I tell myself, “used bookses. Four is two when they’re used bookses precious.”

Nor do I possess any self restraint when new books are involved. A couple of weeks I ago I headed to Borders, to use up the $4.50 remaining on a gift card I’d received for Christmas. That balance paid for most one book and then somehow I felt compelled to purchase another. I told the cashier: “One is no good precious. One book is a sad book, a lonely book. We need two bookeses today precious, two bookses.”

I won’t even mention the frenzy sparked by the library’s book sale with $0.50 paperbacks and $1.00 trades. And no one should be surprised that at last count my ‘to read’ pile cache had reached 184 volumes - closing in on about three year’s worth of reading.

The power of the Precious is terrible, indeed. Nice Precioussssss........