My sister has lent me a copy of The Beach to read. I am not sure if it is her copy or her boyfriend's or if it is their what I do know is they took it to Thailand with them and there is a photograph of him reading it there. I also know it is one of the most beat up books I have seen for a long time.
The book itself is new, from September last year. I know this because it belongs to a range of books that are exclusive to Australia and New Zealand. A range of books that I particularly enjoy because of their price. $9.95 who wouldn't enjoy that price? Despite enjoying reading, and knowing that the books I buy I will own for several decades (hopefully) rereading them several times in this time period I can not bring myself to spend more than $15 on a book without feeling that some injustice has been commited against me. In Australia it is difficult to find a book for under $15.
The books beaten up exterior has given me certain freedoms. Freedoms I had gradually lost due to my desire to keep the books looking pristine. Maybe it is the fault of the librarian in Stephen King's Four Past Midnight, a carry over from being a “collector” of things or maybe because of how nice the classic Penguin range looks? I am not sure, all I know is I have become more and more concerned with the appearance of my books, not wanting to alter their condition too much, lest they no longer look new. Idiotic I know, but it matters to me. However since this book is already beaten up and I can do nothing to do it to make it look worse than what it already does, other than dunking it in coffee and setting it on fire or some other terrible abuse, I am able to regress back in my method of handling. I am able to bend the cover completely over so the front is touching the back (a much more comfortable way of reading) and mark my place by folding down the corner of the page. I like this. I like this so much it is making me think that buying second hand books may be the way to go in the future.
I used to love buying second hand books. Not because I could abuse them but because of the smell, how they looked (the fact that they were worn and beat up strangely enough), the price and because they always had a Stephen King novel I hadn't read. Then the Stephen King novels started to dry up and became harder and harder to find one I hadn't read. If you wanted a copy of Needless Things you were in luck, Carrie or The Shining not so much. My reading tastes also started to change, not organically and allowed to evolve naturally because I think if that had of happened I'd 've been set for life. Pulp horror is a staple of second hand book stores it seems but deliberately. At 17/18 as any kid who has been told they're smart all their life does, I decided that I was going to start reading serious literature. Not the classics heavens no, but things like what you'd find in the Penguin line of modern classics now Burroughs, Kesey, Heller, Kafka, Vonnegut all that good shit. So for two or three years I sat around fantasising about owning these books, pursuing them on Amazon but never buying them.
I had my heart set on Vonnegut and Kessey after having read old teaching copies stolen from the English Department at school of Slaughterhouse 5, Cat's Cradle and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (yet my classes never got to study them) and these were authors I couldn't find in the book stores of my city. I managed to get hold of a copy of Catch 22 and Breakfast of Champions but could never find anything more than that. It was as if these books didn't exist.
Then one day I discovered the joys of online shopping and I haven't looked back. Now the idea of the second book store is quaint and elicits feelings of nostalgia in me. It is outside my area of experience now so I can romanticise it, like an office worker dreaming of a job working the land on a farm. It offers me freedom, but at what cost?
I wouldn't have made a good patriot.
