I buy new books.

I know, I know. What about indie bookstores? Buy local. Recycle. Second hand books, so romantic. Buy e-books from independent publishers. All that.

And what about that one time I said I would stop buying new books until I read all the old ones.

But.

That one bookstore. The really huge one which possibly is part of a chain. It has a coffee shop and merchandise and tables with piles and piles of books, it would take whole days to read only the titles of all the books on all the tables, and it has armchairs for you to sit in with your pile of books that you picked up from those tables. *New* books. Fresh out of the press. Expensive books. Hardcovers, even.

With that smell they have. The crackle of their pages. So creamy to the touch, so white to the eyes. So heavy, hefty in my hands.

All the promises. Not only of stories, of lives, of thoughts. Those books, they promise new beginnings. They promise all the sunny afternoons lying on a couch, or outside on the grass, under a tree. Even if that never happens — but can’t you feel it, aren’t you already there, sitting there, in that bookshop? Isn’t that why you need to buy all the books, the new books, the expensive ones?

I know it’s why do it. Why I did it, and will keep doing it.