When I was little, when Borders was still around, I loved buying books. Dad would tell me I could buy one book, and I\u2019d take so long looking around, trying to decide between all the different books I wanted. I wanted everything.<\/p>\n
In recent years, as I\u2019ve had to start thinking about saving money, I haven\u2019t bought nearly as many books. Most of the books I get now are presents for my birthday or Christmas. Aside from buying textbooks, the only real time I spend money on books is when I get a gift card.<\/p>\n
Well, I got a gift card for Christmas this year, and I\u2019ve been debating what to spend it on since. Here\u2019s the thing: there are countless novels I\u2019ve been meaning to read, but I don\u2019t really want to spend money on a random novel unless it\u2019s one I\u2019m going to revisit. Otherwise, I could just check it out from the library, right? If I\u2019m going to buy a novel, I want it to be one of my new favorites, you know? I don\u2019t regret owning I Am the Messenger<\/em> by Markus Zusak or The Perks of Being a Wallflower<\/em> by Stephen Chbosky, because I\u2019d like to reread those one day, and it feels good to own your favorite books. When people are visiting, they see the books you use to represent yourself.<\/p>\n In the end, with the help of my friend Kh\u00e1hn San, I settled on two books. The first was Cloud Atlas<\/em> by David Mitchell. There\u2019s no guarantee it\u2019ll be one of my favorite books or anything, but it\u2019s very long, complex, and difficult, so I\u2019ll want longer than the standard library loan period to read it. I\u2019ll probably want to go back and revisit earlier chapters late in the book, and really get into the experience of decoding the complex web of narratives. The other I chose, on my friend\u2019s recommendation, was Bluets<\/em> by Maggie Nelson. I\u2019m told it\u2019s a relatively accessible book of poetry, and that\u2019s what I\u2019m looking for. I figure a book of poetry is another good choice for buying, since poems are the kind of writing you want to revisit a lot. You don\u2019t really read them as narrative; rereading a poem is different from just reading the same story over again.<\/p>\n Even if I don\u2019t buy many books anymore, there\u2019s still something so magical about bookstores; even if I don\u2019t want to buy<\/em> every book, I still want to read every one. Once everything is in ebook form and bookstores are less populous, this is what I\u2019m going to miss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I was little, when Borders was still around, I loved buying books. Dad would tell me I could buy one book, and I\u2019d take so long looking around, trying to decide between all the different books I wanted. I wanted everything. In recent years, as I\u2019ve had to start thinking about saving money, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8227"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2178"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8227"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8228,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8227\/revisions\/8228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}