the other night i walked around oakpark for hours and hours and hours and i was pretty much in heaven.
i went to the library and three bookstores. THE LIBRARY AND THREE BOOKSTORES.
the oakpark library is enormous and architecturally beautiful and it has tons of awesome shit in it and they show movies there like the corporation that you wanted to see but never saw. i could pretty much live there.
the book table is the best bookstore in the world. all their books are new and discounted or used and cheap as hell so you can get pretty much any book you want for like six dollars which is awesome and they have tons of awesome stuff in there and you can look around for an hour and find things you've never heard of that look incredible like vernon god little which i bought some british version of with nice cover art which is important because i am shallow. and i didn't even have to dig through a bunch of shitty shit to find it.
i'm obsessed with books. if i could marry fictitious novels i would but i would totally be a philanderer and have sordid affairs with periodicals and biographies.
i also went into borders. because i had to pee and i was standing right outside borders. that is why i went into the worst bookstore in the world. i hate stupid sterile borders. i hate their stupid coffee shop and the stupid hippie bongo players that play in their stupid coffee shop and the stupid display tables and the stupid asinine books on the stupid display tables and the stupid armchairs for stupid people to sit in and read stupid asinine books from the stupid display tables. the stupid asinine books that are on display not because of their quality but because they are the right size and shape. guess what, borders is not the first place to have chairs and books, go to the fucking library. i wouldn't even be surprised if borders eventually tries to put libraries out of business like it does to everything else. stupid fucking borders. going into borders makes me feel like i'm dying a little bit. anyway i only went in there to pee.
i hoard books. i like to hoard books i haven't read like a hamster hoards food and if i have like less than three books i haven't read i read ones i've already read so i can save up new books and go on a reading of new books binge. i don't care i like reading books i've already read before. i've read the autobiography of malcom x so many times it split in two. right now i'm reading breakfast of champions.
i was born to read. i taught myself how to do it before i was three years old. i don't remember it being very hard. one of the first books i read was called lafcadio the lion who shot back. one of the other first books i read was cat's cradle. i still absolutely love both of those books.
i don't love all books. i hate shakespeare. i hate the scarlett letter. i remember finishing whole chapters of that book and having no idea what i had just read. that was when i found out i could read and think about something else entirely at the exacct same time. someone once told me that when he reads he reads like EVERY WORD. and this is unique? people exist that do not do this?
i didn't hate every book i read for school. i liked the great gatsby. and a clockwork orange. their eyes were watching god. a clockwork orange was a good book. it's split into three sections, seven chapters each. twenty one all together. that is meaningful. the movie is missing the final chapter. the final chapter is important.
when i was in grade school i used to walk to the library and take out six books at a time. they will not let you take out more than six books. they give you three weeks to return them. i could have read 26 books in six weeks. i was like seven. i didn't have anything else to do. then i would sit outside this school i didn't go to and read and when the streetlights came on i would walk into lampposts and trip over cracks in the sidewalk (break your momma's back) because i read while i walked home and then when i went to bed i would read under the blankets with a flashlight. i remember being scared i would get caught reading when i was supposed to be asleep. i was very scared. later i remember being a little scared but not very that i would get caught snorting heroin up my nose in my bedroom with my best friend. i'm not sure what the fuck happened to me. i don't think i can blame any books i read. junky? less than zero?
sometimes when i'm reading a book i could almost cry because i didn't write it. focus. glamorama. once i read a book called american skin by don degrazia. reading that book i almost could have cried because i COULD have written it. i could have written it better. i gave it away. i never give books away. i'm going to write a book one day. i promise.