Library Books: A Small Antidote to a Life of Perpetual Dissatisfaction – The New York Times
The library had, for the thousandth time, performed its mundane magic trick: It had vaulted me into the future the prosaic, dog-eared, heaped-by-the-bedside future that this book and I would, however promising our first encounter, inevitably have ended up having anyway. The initial flush of book-lust promises: This book will change everything; this will be the one that finally gets you into epic poetry; this will teach you how to meditate. The library says: This book will contain a stranger s ancient receipt and will be out of your life in three weeks.
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And in dispelling my fantasies of permanence, the library does more than save me the cost of a paperback it provides me with a template for navigating the great sea of longing and disappointment that is life.
via www.nytimes.com
A good reason to avoid libraries and only buy books. Then you can graduate to buying only books on kindle. Then to only downloading samples and discovering you don’t really want to read them. Life is no less disappointing but it makes the longing a bit more manageable.