a frightening accomplishment

This week I became a book collector.

Not that I haven't, in the general sense, "collected" books for a long time, and even bought [used] second copies of books I already owned because, well, it's just good to have them around (and what if, in your ravings about a book's wonderfulness, you actually persuade somebody to take it from you and read it -- happy day!).

But this week I bought a book I already owned (one I just bought, in fact) just to have it in a particular edition.

When my next installment comes from half.com, I should have all of Lewis's Cosmic Trilogy with the horrible, awful, 1960's Bernard Symancyk covers. They really are the strangest thing; I don't see how he could've read the books at all.

So there's that.

On a related thought, does anybody else out there feel like a used book is actually more valuable than a new book? Especially an old used book?

Then you can enjoy not only the book's story, but wonder about the story of the person who used to own it . . . people like Harold March, who studyied the textbook On Poetry at the University of Oregon in 1932, lovingly preserved both of the bookjackets, and wrote "how true!" in the margin of a truly true poem; what kind of poetry did Harold write? . . . or Clara Smith, who bought (or was given?) a first-edition copy of To Kill a Mockingbird on February 16, 1962; did she read it? . . . or Candace, whose parents gave her a 19-year-old copy of Perelandra on her birthday, 11 March 1984; how old was she turning and why did they give her such an old copy?

???