Please Return by 7 Minutes

Of course not! That would be perfectly absurd, what, what! I adjust my monocle and look imperious and tap the silver tip of my umbrella onto the ground.

This is the reaction I give to anyone that suggests I get something from the library. I really don't like libraries for some reason and it's hard to place my finger on why.

Maybe it's my belief that there must be something inherently wrong with librarians, like they have some untouchable quality to them, like ghosts.

I think libraries are a great thing for a city to have, and a city and her citizens can be judged on how cool their library is. This is a notion given to me by the man who taught me the word "troglodyte" long before Robert E. Howard did.

I think libraries are a great idea on paper; but I feel about libraries the way Stalin felt about communism: Not For Me.

I even feel a pang of guilt when a library closes, but just like with that kid I didn't pick up the phone to feed, it goes away.

Someone suggested it might be a germ thing, but I don't think so. Considering I only play Words With Friends while sitting on the toilet and you'd probably have to scrape the fecal matter off my phone to find the Apple logo; I don't think it's a germ thing.

It is a little bit of an ownership thing. I get a kick out of owning books, and I love the virginal feel of a new book. That white trail on the spine is mine, that marks my progress. I have laid hands on that book and I have masticated it with my hands and eyes, I have touched every single page and I have become intimate with the smell.

That being said, I do prefer new books, but old, used books have the better smell. I like to slowly go through used book stores lingering and searching. There's something here and I'm listening for it. This cover is out of print / this cover doesn't say those damnable words: Now a Major Motion Picture.   True, the white tracks on the spine are not mine, but the person who made that first trek is (maybe) dead and, like a cannibal, I now have some of their essence.

I think the only thing that pisses me off about libraries, when we get down to it, is the notion that they want the book back in so-and-so amount of time. The last time I had a book out on loan I had to call the library twice for an extension. I don't have to ask the server for more time when I'm eating, do I? That's what it amounts too. I'm not shoveling through these mashed potatoes for you, prick.

Buying a book means one interaction, the transaction. Whereas borrowing from the library means I'm going to have to see this person twice and on the second go around they're going to be judging me on how fast I read.

My black-rimmed glasses won't work on these folks, no pseudo-intelligent snobbery here, they'll see that it took me three weeks to read The Hunger Games and start talking to me like I've just come out of a coma.