Shopping is the American way of life.
Spending used to be.
We may be looking more than we are buying.
Or just wishing we could own that new car, smartphone or super sneakers.
When I’m shopping for groceries, clothes or gifts, I know when to quit. My credit card begins to tremble.
I don’t feel that way about shopping for books. Sometimes I’ll spend way too much if I see a couple of new books I really think I must have.
Since I am 998 books behind, it’s hard to say when I’ll get around to reading them.
Maybe by the time I do the darn things look outdated and even silly.
Which is why I have sworn off books about current affairs. They age faster than you can imagine. Yesterday’s outrageous political issues, with a few exceptions, are old news in a big hurry. There is always a new outrage lurking just around the corner. Politicians and political writers are quick to find them. A few even invent them.
I love to lurk around in used book shops. I can find some great stuff there. The current affairs books date so quickly they can’t find buyers in used book stores.
Books on European royalty, which used to be very popular, are now being turned away by used book store owners.
You can find some great books on history, geography and travel.
In new book stores, of which there are fewer and fewer, this has been a great spring for new baseball titles. Lots of great old players are finally getting their due in new biographies. Writers are taking a look at some of the more fascinating baseball seasons. My favorite was the one where two last place teams from Minnesota and Atlanta rose to the top and played each other in a great world series.
Great military histories have just about run their course. Thanks to a spate of new books on World War II and Korea, the market has been filled.
For a time, I was fascinated by books about business scams and the great 2008 Wall Street bloodbath. Michael Lewis is the author who got me into that.
But that’s turning into old news, too, as are the angry political rants from the left and right.
Sometimes the oddest titles sit side by side on the new arrivals table. One talks about the great new century ahead while it’s neighbor is concerned with the end of energy resources, water and such. One predicts great times ahead and the other the end of everything we know and love.
Take your pick. I leave them both alone.
The big theme right now is the growing rift between the unimaginably wealthy few and the rest of us. This “Great Divide” is finding as big an audience as Al Gore’s book on the environment did years ago.
If I am looking for really meaty reading material, I head for the religion and philosophy shelves. Or just drive down to the Kenyon bookstore in Gambier.
Now and then a slick science fiction or detective novel will fill the bill.
I keep shopping. I’m waiting for the next “Big Thing.’’
I wonder if I’ll ever find time to read it.