It was Friday morning

and though I am incredibly anti-shopping (I really, really hate shopping, and though I have a generally equable and pleasant temperament there is nothing so likely to plunge me into foul-tempered furious misanthropy as a shopping mall--fortunately I don't ever have to set in foot in one any more, but I still think with chagrin of how I behaved to my poor mother when I was a teenager in such circumstances) I guess I succumbed momentarily to the flood of post-Thanksgiving consumerism. I was killing time in the Barnes &Noble at Lincoln Center--it was freezing outside--and I whisked through the ground-floor new books area and basically was on the verge of spending a TON of money until common sense got the better of me. Instead of grabbing armsful of books and (a) pouring money into corporate coffers (b) racking up credit card debt (c) inconveniencing myself with a huge bag of books I would have to carry around the whole rest of the weekend and then back from NY to Cambridge (seriously, it's NEITHER the nice independent bookstore NOR the super-convenient Amazon doorstep thing--and yes, I know B&N is regarded as more politically correct than Amazon, but what can you do...), I took out a piece of paper and wrote down everything I really, really wanted right then & there. And I've just looked them all up in the university library catalog, and out of thirteen books, eight are available in the stacks and I have recalled the other five. (I do think that new/newish books being checked out can be used as an indicator of popularity, so long as you allow for the one-off check-out phenomenon. It also tilts kind of highbrow, b/c of the university thing.) And unfortunately the library's closed early today b/c of the evil holiday weekend thing but I can go tomorrow and get them all. It is no wonder I am feeling smug and self-congratulatory, is it very annoying?