And the book addiction begat the shopping habit which begat the intervention

I have a serious book problem.  Here I am packing, transferring all my junk from one residence to the next, hustling things on Craigslist, celebrating like it's New Year's Eve when the Department of Sanitation agrees to pick up my old box spring mattress, and then what happens?  I pause for a minute and suddenly panic that I won't have anything to read on the plane to DC next week.  I won't have any books because I packed them all!  Horror of horrors, this will not do.  I remember that I have a $20 gift card to Barnes & Noble.  Packing break! 

I know exactly what I want.  In the store, I make my way up to the third floor-- fiction/literature.  The escalators are kind of weird in this one: when you step off on one level you're supposed to turn and walk behind you to the escalator that continues up to the next level.  I always forget and walk across to the other side of the floor to the escalator going back downstairs.  On my way, I pass the music section.  Then I am hit with a sudden, intense desire to own Keith Richard's memoir.  There they are, dozens of them stacked up, 30% off.  An employee hands me a copy.  Hardcover.  Huge.  Not intended for travel, but I'm determined to read it. 

Now to continue on my original mission to find the third book in the Stieg Larsson triology:  The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.  A few weeks ago I had finished the second book, and it kind of left me hanging.  I finally locate it and am dismayed to find that it, too, is only in hard cover.  Yeesh.  These are going to be taking up all the space in my carry-on luggage.  The good news?  It's also 30% off.

So, let's recap.  I-- a person who is trying to get rid of stuff-- now own two new hard back books and have nowhere to put them, not even in my luggage, and certainly not in my home as I have pretty much exhausted all the space on my bookcases both in my room and the living room. . . trip to Ikea, anyone? 

Branch Library

-Edward Hirsch

I wish I could find that skinny, long-beaked boy

who perched in the branches of the old branch library.

He spent the Sabbath flying between the wobbly stacks

and the flimsy wooden tables on the second floor,   

pecking at nuts, nesting in broken spines, scratching

notes under his own corner patch of sky.

I'd give anything to find that birdy boy again

bursting out into the dusky blue afternoon

with his satchel of scrawls and scribbles,

radiating heat, singing with joy.