Confessions of the compulsive

Yes, today should be “Dispatches,” but honestly, don’t you think “Dispatches” is more of a Friday kind of post? I think so, anyway. So that’s what’s happening this week.

Today, I’d like to talk about other things. Things that go deeper. Like how many pairs of shoes I own. (Not really.) Like why I keep singing the song “peaches” by the Presidents of the United States of America in my head. (OK, not that either.) Like why I compulsively buy books, especially copies of novels written by Jane Austen.

Yep, that’s the one.

See, yesterday, after my off-site story planning meeting ended early, I went by Borders, which is sort of like my happy place. I like to touch the books; I like the smell of ink on paper. If I’m not careful, I can while away hours in bookstores and not even know it. Yesterday, I went in intending to look at some cloth bound Penguin Classics that I’m sort of obsessed by. They are just so beautiful. I just stand in front of them and try to decide how many I can legitimately purchase. Then, I think about how my house is quickly becoming a library with the amount of books I own. Then, I banish that thought and trace the patterns on the cover of a copy of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.

I left with only one of the beautiful Peguin Classics: a copy of Pride and Prejudice. If you’ve read this blog long, you know I love Jane Austen. I’ve even read her unfinished works. I own the BBC and Kiera Knightley versions of the movie. I’ve read the books more times than I care to admit and prickle at the implication recently leveled at me: that Jane Austen was a painful writer. That’s just crazy talk, people! (I do understand that not everyone loves classic or like reading books written in that time period and the Regency style, but I don’t think you can say Jane wasn’t a good writer. She was. If all these years later something in her books still connects with the world, then she was a good writer. Just because the language and style is daunting to some readers is no reason to discount her.)

Umm, see what just happened there? I went all Austen on you. I apologize. But I guess you do see that the admiration and love for her books runs deep.

And I also guess it’s why I compulsively buy copies of her books. For a long time, the only copies I had of Austen’s work were paperbacks. I have a big compilation that contains P&P, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion. I have paperback copies of Emma and Mansfield Park. Somewhere along the lines, I obtained a beautiful leather-bound copy of Sense and Sensibility and last year, I got a paperback containing Austen’s unfinished novels.

Then, things kind of got a little crazy. My mom gave me a copy of Pride and Prejudice she’d found at my grandma’s when they were cleaning out her attic after her death. It had belonged to my great aunt. It sits on my coffee table now. Then, I ran across a hardcover copy of Persuasion, my favorite Austen book, in a used book store. I bought it right then and there. Months later, in the same used bookstore, I ran across an old hardcover copy of Sense and Sensibility with an early 1900s copyright date and a handwritten note stuck inside the front cover from the person who originally gave the book to a friend. I bought it and put it on my coffee table with the old P&P copy.

Then, yesterday, I saw the beautiful clothbound Penguin Classics P&P. And I bought it. Simply because it was beautiful.

Apparently, I collect old copies of Austen novels now. At least that’s what I’m saying. It makes it sound a little less compulsive.