A friend told me there'll be another booksale in Cambridge. This is one of those "warehouse booksale" where you are taken to, literally, a warehouse where thousands of books just laying around waiting for you to pick them up.
Last time I went there, I bought dozen of books at ₤2 each - and those books were the result of 5 unbelievable hours trying to sort which ones should be bought now and which can wait until next time. They were heavy-weight academic textbooks, of the type that can knock someones off if you throw it to them. Considering the fact that it was early winter and I had to walk around Cambridge (and London) with those books, I decided that I could only took 12 books. The rest would have to wait.
Now, those were not the main source books that I used for my study. I just bought them because I thought they could contribute to my endeavor to be one of those "learned people". And let's be honest: there's only fewer things that can add to the beauty of a student bedroom than piles of thick and monstrous-looking textbooks. Those would nicely complement piles of dirty laundry and Chinese food takeaway in the corner.
After 3 months since, did I read any of them ? Well, not really. I mean, when you're a student, often you couldn't even find enough time to read the source books. Especially if you're also prone to other temptations, which coincidentally, it is as if Satan was given a season-ticket this year to distract me from my study.
So, what's the point of buying those books then ? And why I can't control the urge to , knowing that I might not read them all ? Could it be that I''ve fallen to the hoarder's mentality trap ?
People hoard many things. Usually it is food, clothes or other basic necessities. Sometime it can take more respectable items, and instead of being called a "hoarder", people called you "collector". It's more respectable because "a collector's item" assume that they are selected of excellence qualities.
But basically hoarder and collector are the same. The difference is just minor: instead of collecting cheap goods like cans of sardine, you collect luxury items like painting, cars or (admittedly rare these days) trophy wives.
Some would say that they hoard (well, OK, "collect") because the items might be useful in the future. But is it so ? Can you imagine Imelda Marcos would ever wear that no.100 pair of shoes in her collection of thousands ? Most probably she would just bought a new pair, especially since Manolo Blahnik will release the latest spring collection in the next few weeks (naah... I just made this part up).
Some would say that it was just for showing off. Which is hard to understand. If you meet a man who collect thousands of CDs, LPs and DATs (tapes), and he doesn;t work for a library, what do you think of him ? Nuts, I would say. And don't get me wrong: a friend of mine do have that kind of collections - he agreed that there must be something wrong in him although he professed that he did all that "for the love of music". But SBY was said to have a 13,000 books in his library ? Well, firstly I doubt that he really collect (let alone read) the books all by himself. And secondly, you just can't argue with a general of the army (and a president). they live in a different sphere from the rest of us mortal souls.
Guess I have to stop here, though. My laptop have just notified me that it's running out of disk space. Apparently I have to move those 20's gB of mp3 from the system, so I can convert the next 300 CDs into my collection. Or make it 200 CDs and 10,000 Grisham-size ebooks.
Jan 25, '05 6:49 PM
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