Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Second hand rose...

...I'm reading second hand books.

I know, that didn't rhyme. I do buy second hand clothes, but that's not what I was doing tonight. After supper (chicken in the crockpot, mmm) and after I had settled the tired husband and teen and separated the tussling bunnies, I went out to pick up contact lense solution and a big bag of paperbacks. I bought a couple mysteries, a few novels, and one young adult sci-fi book for my classroom collection. Okay, maybe I bought more than a few novels. I spent (gulp) $24 at the bookstore, after she deducted my discount for the books I brought back to resell. Well, I rationalize this in several ways.
1. I got a lot more for my money than I would have if I'd bought new books.
2. This should hold me for at least a month, if not more.
3. I can contribute a few to our fiction basket in the staff lounge.
4. It's one of my few guilty pleasures.

This is all about balance. I read newspapers and Time magazine regularly. I read professional books and journals to keep up to date in my field. These are the books that I will read for me alone -- books that let me lose myself in a plot, in a setting, in characters that are like me or totally unlike me. These are the books that I will read to relax at night. They're books that will settle my mind, not get it spinning, right before bed.

Long ago, when we were newlyweds and we lived in a small resort town, I considered opening a shop like the one I visited tonight. Now I consider it as a possible retirement option. I could combine it with a coffeehouse and serve locally baked treats. I could call it Creative Juices or Expressivo and have a theme decor of classical music and/or local art. La Petite's photography could be displayed and sold. Amigo could work there; he is so friendly and likable, I know he'd be great as greeter or server. He doesn't drink coffee, but he sure likes people. He could probably suggest good local musicians to play there, too. If I chose a train theme, Husband's HO scale models could line the walls. I can't think of a shop name to go with trains: Train of Thought or The Coffee Engine? There must be a better idea somewhere.

Or not. I'm only in my mid-forties, so retirement isn't in the picture for a long, long time. But I can dream.

Labels:

Digg! Stumble It! add to kirtsy

1 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Oh, I am soooo into second hand books too, I think spending $24 there sounds perfectly reasonable :)

Enjoy your books!

10/26/2006 2:00 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home

Smile!

Search & Win

About 1 in 5 child deaths is due to injury. CDC Vital Signs www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns

Creative 

Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.

Copyright, 2003-2008 by OkayByMe. All rights reserved. No part of this blog may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval without written permission from Daisy, the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. In other words, stealing is bad, and if you take what doesn't belong to you, it's YOUR karma and my lawyers you might deal with.