WORKS CITED

Sometimes I think I'm an idiot. Whatever happened to my natural-born Kenyan hustle? Allow me to explain:

My appetite for reading material [fiction, for the most part] is voracious. When I first discovered libraries I thought I was in virtual heaven: with a free library card I could go home with any book? How ridiculously amazing is that? So I attacked the fiction shelves alphabetically, no less. I wasn't working or going to school then so I had all day, and best believe I lived in the library. I'd get into the Quiet Room at noon and leave much later. I read a book a day, seriously.

In a few short months I'd exhausted the tiny library's inventory. School and work started soon after and I didn't have as much time to kill, so I joined the largest library in the area, assuming they had more inventory. And they did. Not only that, but they sold used novels at the ridiculous rate of $.50 each. Fifty cents?! Sweetness! So I'd go get 10-20 books at a time, and life was just dandy.

It only took 3 trips to the library before I realized I had a major problem - I was accumulating too many books. The shelf quickly filled up and I started stacking them floor to ceiling. Fortunately, some girl who worked next to my workplace was as voracious a reader as I, if not more so, and we'd swap books all the time like it was dope. I'd go to her crib or she to mine, or at work, and we'd pop the whips' trunks and swap trash-bagfuls of them joints. Plus, she knew this one place where she could trade or sell books for 50 cents, so I was good. All too soon tho, she had to move to another state and I was again stuck with the problem of having too many damn books.

So I stopped reading as much, if only to keep my bedroom floor book-free. I still bought the occasional book from the grocery or drugstore, but they're [comparatively] expensive there.

And then I discovered Borders, and it was a wrap. The sheer volume of books, brand new titles especially, was mind-blowing. But then I learned real quick that new books, when they first come out, are only in hardcover, not paperback. I don't give a sh*t about hardcovers; I'm more interested in a book's content - and its price. So while brand-spanking-new paperbacks could go for $8.00, their thick-skinned counterparts can go for as much as $30. That's way too much for a book I'll only read once.

So, back to the issue of my lost hustle: I've been patiently waiting for Dan Brown's latest, The Lost Symbol. I went to Borders yesterday to check it out and it was finally available - for about $30, no less. But then it hit me like a thunderbolt: Why not grab the book, find a nice comfy seat, read as much of it as I could then put it back on the shelf?

And so I did just that. And as far as I can tell, that's what I'll be doing from now on with books I know I'll only read once. I know a good number of you probably do this already, but I can't believe it just recently occurred to me. I so feel like an idiot!

Matter of fact, I gotta go back right now and read a couple more chapters; the plot's got me already.
Later y'all. Be true to yourself.


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Hip-Hop verse of the day:

"She be jumpin' up and down tryin' to fit that a$$ in
Took her half an hour just to get that belt to fasten..."

Drake in Young Money's Every Girl