June 22, 2015

TALKTIME #2: Why Buying Books Makes Me Feel Guilty

TALKTIME #2: WHY BUYING BOOKS MAKES ME FEEL GUILTY



      This past weekend I had my graduation open house. As most of you know, people generally give the graduates money at open houses. Needless to say I did get money. The money is for college, however one person gave me one of those MasterCard gift cards with $100 on it and my parents told me to go ahead and spend it on what I want. Needless to say I immediately went to go buy books.
       For the first time I bought books on BookOutlet. It is definitely different than buying books from Amazon, my usual online source for books. I bought four books for a grand total of $22. I was ecstatic to get so many books for such a cheap price. This excitement soon went away though.
      Buying books makes me feel extremely guilty. This has always been a problem of mine. The only time I haven't bought more than one book at once is when I'm buying books for school. I cannot simply buy one book; I have to buy at least three without feeling guilty. However, the guilt of buying books soon hits me.
      I do not buy physical books that often. Books in general actually. The closest and only bookstore in my county is thirty minutes away so I don't usually buy books from there. My next source of buying books is Amazon. I feel so guilty buying books on Amazon because I will buy like 8 books and spend $80 in less than 30 minutes. That is why I usually limit myself to buying either Kindle books or using my library's online ebook library.
     I am not rich. Far from it. I am going from a high school student to a broke college student this fall. The majority of my money for as long as I can remember has always been applied to school and will continue to be applied to school. I only buy books after holidays such as my birthday and Christmas, however I feel guilty doing this because both celebrations are a month apart so I usually splurge.
      I do not have a large collection of books. I see so many book hauls on bookstragram and booktube that just blow my mine. I cannot fathom that people have that much money to just spend on books every month. Doing a haul is a rare occurrence to me.  
      What I'm trying to get at is buying books makes me feel guilty because I know that is money that can be better used for a better purpose, such as school. It would be nice if in the far future when I am a loaded doctor to buy books whenever I want and a whatever quantity, but for at least the next 15 years, that is not going to happen. And I am okay with that. I do not need to own a lot of books. To me the actual experience of reading is more important than owning books.
      What about you guys? Do you get guilty buying books? Or do you not even think about it? 

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