The Bliss of Browsing
One recent night the kids were in bed, and there were any number of things I should have done: resting, reading, writing, etc. Yet what I really wanted was to go to a bookstore. And when I tried to talk myself out of it (don’t need to, don’t want to buy books, what about the new book vow, etc.) I realized that I didn’t want to go book shopping; I wanted to browse.
Aimless browsing (aimless anything, really) is one of the casualties of this parent’s life. Trips to Target, the grocery store, the library, or anywhere else, are constrained by my kids’ short attention spans and my often depleted reserves of patience. But to browse? To wander hither and yon, with nothing to lead me on but my own whims? I went out directly.
With just over an hour till closing time, I browsed fiercely. I looked at all the Hemingway titles, trying (vainly) to figure out which collection of stories I read in college (turns out it was In Our Time.) I checked out the editions of To Kill a Mockingbird, since I’ll want a new one before I re-read it, and I don’t like the photo-cover TPB they sell at Target. I scanned the new-release tables, with their alluring covers and blurbs, but I was immune to their siren calls. Then I spent a good long time in the kids section going through the maddeningly subdivided board-book section. (Alphabetically by author! What’s so hard about that? I don’t need to look through Disney/Basics/Things That Go/Colors/etc.) I found so many gems in the paperback picture-book section that I had to take home a few. I Stink and Farmer Duck came home with me, but Mr. Gumpy’s Outing, It’s My Birthday, and Fables all went back to the shelf, amid much regretful sighing. I went to the register at the fifteen-minutes-to-closing announcent, and got a dollar off the price of one of the books because it was banged up, and because I asked. So yes, I did buy some books. But I didn’t go book shopping. I went book looking. And that was much more rewarding.