Bookshelves

Two competing theories of bookshelves: a) They're for impressing people with titles you haven't read; b) They're for impressing people with titles you have read. With a smattering of "you don't deserve to own things", straight out of those asinine cable shows where some bitch clears everything you've spent your life collecting out of your house, lets you choose one item to keep, and throws the rest away, because no one should own things they enjoy (just like no one should enjoy eating cheeseburgers or driving a car; 21st-century Puritanism is worse than it ever was when it was about sex).

Obviously I subscribe to none of those theories. To start, very few people who don't already know me are ever in my apartment to judge my reading, so if I buy a book it's because I want to read it. Or because someone's plane is three hours late--I love the used bookstore in the airport. I need more bookshelves, because the piles are taking over my bedroom. The cat has learned they are dangerous places to perch on or next to, but I keep tripping on them in the middle of the night.

The latest book is a Lonely Planet guide to München und Bayern, which arrived semi-mysteriously in the mail Tuesday as a very unsubtle hint. I guess I'm going to Germany in Mai.