Confessions of a Book Slut

Am I using that word correctly? The way I see it, a whore sleeps with anyone for money, whereas a slut can be more selective. I don't pay more than I want for used books; I'm just cheap. :)

The school's library is moving one floor down, and the offices in that space are moving one floor up, so the librarian e-mailed the campus about a book sale to dispose of older volumes (instead of sending them to recycling) for just $1 each.

"Sure," I thought. "I'll be safe, since I donate to them, not vice versa. Besides, what could they offer that I'd rather have on my shelf than theirs?" Oops.

Hey, is that a bound collection of all of Nathaniel Hawthorne's works? That means I won't have to hunt out separate volumes at the used bookstores!

Hey, that looks like two sets of all of Charles Dickens's works. (I chose the one that had not been rebound, even though it wasn't as pretty as the set that had.)

I also picked out an "old" (1966) dictionary for my office, a couple of old (1920's) children's books for my mom because they looked like the type of thing her mother would've bought her, some books I think my friends Betty and Gimpy might like, and The Dictionary of Cliches.

So what if I walked out of there (um, staggered might be a better word, considering how heavy the boxes were) with 47 books? They were only a dollar each!

Oh, and I took my friend Robomarkov (visiting the Noog for a week's vacation) to my preferred used bookstore and the mega used bookstore today. I did well. All right, I bought one more volume than my preset spending total, but that's not too bad, is it?