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I don't buy books


I've been working at a library now for about three years. Since I started, I've bought roughly five books -- all of which are children's books that I got signed at the conference where they won the Ezra Jack Keats award. Other than that, I haven't bought any books, preferring to borrow them from the library.


My habit includes books even non-readers generally buy, such as cookbooks (at least, when I think of the Platonic non-reader, I imagine them buying cookbooks) and instructional texts. I see the library as an extension of my own house, because in a very real way it is: I am free to borrow a book at any time, for functionally as long as I'd like, and when I return it, I don't have to worry about it taking up space in my house or on my (already-full) bookshelf. If the library doesn't have a title, I can request a purchase, and usually it'll happen. The only time they haven't is when the book isn't reviewed somewhere, which is usually because it's self-published or something. I *could* buy the book at that point, but it turns out that I was only passingly curious in the text and I forget about it.


I moved around a lot during college -- home, then dorms, then home again for summer, and again dorms, for four years -- and afterward I went across the country and into multiple houses, and during all that time the heaviest thing by far to move was my books. When I was living at my parents' house I amassed quite a collection of books, many from library discard-sales or used book stores or thrift stores, most of which I never actually read. Moving as many times as I did those few years purged me of the majority of those books, though I did keep buying new ones, notably books from visiting writers at a twice-yearly convention. I still have all of those, though they've weighed on my mind, since I haven't read nearly any of them either.


The books I have now fill a tall bookshelf and a short one. I have maybe 350 books or so. I've slowly been getting rid of them as well, once I can bring myself to part with them -- it's slow going because they all have some pull on me, though I can't explain it on most of them. I just like books as objects, in a lot of ways.


The one downside of not buying books, so far as I can tell, is I'm not supporting authors. I'm assuaged in the fact that most authors get small percentages of the actual price of their books, so my not buying them usually doesn't put them out too much. Plus, if the library's bought a copy, then they've got that revenue, though it's not as much as if both I and the library bought a copy.


But I also don't buy books out of ideals: I don't think ideas should be anything other than free. I know that's a tough sell (ha) in the current global economy, where it's required to sell ideas to make rent and dinner. I just know that I don't want to buy books. And my local library enables me to do that.

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