Book Alert. OMG, I can't keep up with all the books I wanna read.

Egads. How will I ever be able to read all the books I'm interested in? I'm reading two excellent books, right now - "The Experience of Alzheimer's Disease", by Steven R. Sabat, wonderfully in depth, thoughtful, informative; and Parker Palmer's "A Hidden Wholeness", that I'm inching my way through.

I stopped by Changing Aging and much to my delight and dismay saw mention of "The Braindead Megaphone" by George Saunders in the same breath as talk of David Sedaris.

Then Stacey left the following comment on this blog in response to my post "No wonder Carl Dennis won a Pulitzer for Poetry":

"billy collins has a new book out called ballistics. it includes a poem called hippos on holiday. needless to say i'm ecstatic.
-stacey"

So now I'm faced with a quandary - (and for those of you who spent time in New York 40 years ago, and listened to the radio, the jingle "Are you in a quandary, about which is the better laundry? Then try Tribune, try Tribune, try Tribune soon" is now running through your head at the sight of the word quandary. A highly effective ad campaign, I'd say.) Do I go to amazon and order both books right now, using my free two-day shipping option? (Free only because I pay somewhere around $70 a year for the service that encourages me to go to amazon and order both books right now routinely.) Or do I wait until I have the time to drive to Border's, or in a more perfect world, walk to Border's as I would have in the past, when time was a more fluid commodity in my life, thereby doing my part to help keep this actual, not virtual, bookstore alive and well? It means paying more and using fuel and waiting longer and, who knows what else.

And then there's the issue of buying more books. It's okay to buy them, right, to support the authors and the industry of actual, rather than virtual books? And the issue of the other books that are in line, stacked up in my bookcase like planes at LaGuardia, awaiting their turn to be read.

Several years ago a friend of mine told me his theory with regard to spending money. It went something along the lines of, it's okay to have one spending vice - say buying books. Just allow yourself that one, give in to it, enjoy it guiltlessly, don't go too crazy, but don't let the buying spill into other areas. But then there's Reverend Billy's The Church of Stop Shopping and people all over the country, like the group in Berkeley, that have vowed not to buy anything new at all, existing to put me to shame.

A mountain out of a molehill, you say? Order the damn books and get on with your day, for chrissakes.

Okay.