So it’s the end of my semester abroad here in Rome. This means that I’m leaving for the US soon, which in turn means that the task of packing all my stuff back up into suitcases is impending. This implies that I should be purging the stuff I’ve accumulated, getting rid of things, seeing as how I have limited space and an even more limited capacity to physically deal with my luggage.

That would make sense. But am I sensible? Hardly. What do I do? I buy more stuff. What stuff do I buy? Books. Large, heavy books.

I couldn’t help myself. As my friends here in Rome have discovered, I have trouble forcing myself to pass any bookstore without taking a quick look around inside. This can get dangerous at times. So I was wandering around one of Rome’s open air markets yesterday morning checking out the fresh fruits and veggies and other tasty looking things when I spot a sign written in chalk on the side of one of the stands:
LIBRI==>
It’s like offering a small child an ice cream cone or offering a dog a steak or something. Books are magnetic and I’m made of iron. So I wander over to find shelves and tables full of books to browse through. At first I only see the tables full of random Italian books, but when I asked the shopkeeper he pointed out an entire shelf full of English books. Oh joy. I start browsing through them – new books, old books, fiction, nonfiction, a decent selection of just about every genre there is. I find a book about Iran – very new, just published last year – and check the price on the back. £12.99. I ask the guy how much he’s selling it for. €4, he says. €4 for a £12.99 book??? That’s like less than a third of the price!! Well I can’t very well pass THAT up, even if the book is a fat and gigantic paperback. I got that one and another (much smaller) book that originally cost €4.99 for €5 total. I couldn’t help it, I couldn’t pass up a bargain like that. Plus the shop [stall?] keeper was so nice and friendly and talked with me in Italian and spoke slowly so I could understand…I was doomed from the start.

Then today I bought another book from another bookstore. I wanted to get a book to read in Italian, so I went to the bookstore on the way home from school, the one that I’d stopped in a few months ago and had a great conversation with the shopkeepers, and bought one of Calvino’s books (The Nonexistant Knight) in Italian (Il cavaliere inesistente). I really had been planning on getting a book in Italian for a while. I’m half considering getting another one – I wanted to get Calvino’s Italian Folk Tales in Italian (figured it’d be easy to read) but apparently it’s currently being reprinted, but I’ve seen at a couple of the larger bookstores books of Italian short stories with the Italian on one page and the English translation on the opposite page – PERFECT! Then I still want to get the European edition of the Da Vinci Code in paperback…

I really shouldn’t. I really should stop myself. I need to remind myself that I am a very small girl with no upper body strength and I’m gonna need to fit all these books in my luggage and carry them back…no, I’ll be honest, that probably won’t stop me from buying more. I’ll just have to leave more clothes behind, that’s all.