I feel more often than not that I'm not truly home unless I have all of my books around me. I've been a huge reader from early childhood. Back then, I religiously read Madeline L'Engle, C.S. Lewis, and Avi. As a fourth grader, I can remember scheduling a meeting with my school librarian - a 78-year-old nun named Sister Eileen - to complain about her removal of the Goosebumps series. I eventually graduated to non-young-adult books and found myself buying entirely more books than I could realistically read, given the time it takes to, you know, eat and sleep and go to school. If I could've cut that stuff out of the day, I totally could've read all the books I'd buy.

And, frankly, this book buying habit is something I still carry with me, especially with all those Half Price Books stores around. I love to support local businesses, too, so passing by Big Hat Books without going in and inevitably purchasing something proves very difficult. However, after my birthday, I decided to quit buying books until I read all the ones I've got. My birthday was in July and most of my family, not knowing what else to give me, handed me various gift cards to gigantic book stores which I then used to purchase used books via their websites for $1.99 a pop. So since my birthday book buying binge via gift certificates, I haven't bought any books. Except cook books. But those don't count.

After finishing Palahnuik's Invisible Monsters yesterday, I decided to start reading Tim O'Brien's The Lake in the Woods. I can remember buying it at a Half Price Books over two years ago when I read O'Brien's The Things They Carried in a contemporary American lit class at Butler (if you haven't read it, go find it - especially if you like short stories about war, specifically Vietnam. I suggest going to the new library downtown and picking it up). It's been sitting on various shelves in various rooms of various homes I've lived in for the past three years and I hadn't read it.

So I opened it.

And inside, it was signed.

Yeah, that's right - my less-than-five-dollar book's been autographed by Tim O'Brien. It was kind of the coolest thing ever, especially knowing how little I paid for it and how long it's been since I bought it. Who knew? And you may not care or know who the dude is, but I absolutely dig him and his writing. The Lake in the Woods turned out to be an excellent purchase.

So I guess what I'm saying is - you never know what's going to happen, what things really have on the inside. Keep that in mind for the new year, eh?