spontaneously read.

I have become a spontaneous reader.

You're probably not familiar with the term, because I made it up and then neglected to release the new volume of Sandra's Made-Up Terms so that you could know what it meant. I apologize for this oversight. To assist you, I have included this excerpt from the new, as-yet-unreleased edition of Sandra's Made-Up Terms:

spontaneous reader, noun.
1. One who judges books entirely upon their cover.

A spontaneous reader is not someone who, finding a lack of something else to say, enthusiastically reads out signs and labels and anything else she might see around. I call this A Person Who is Celebrating Her Own Literacy, and I have long been one of those. Trips to the grocery store with A Person Who is Celebrating Her Own Literacy are never dull, for they are peppered with exclamations like "Fancy shredded!," "Ho-hos!," and "Macadamia!"

What was I talking about?

Oh yeah, spontaneous reader. I never used to be a spontaneous reader, because it is expensive to read spontaneously. I rarely bought books unless I was pretty sure I was going to like them. The trouble with judging books by their covers is that it's not a reliable method of finding good books. And so I was always afraid of paying for a book that had a really groovy cover and nothing of value inside.

And then I discovered buying books remaindered on internet bookstores, like Daedalus Books. And that was cool, because I picked out some good books (and some crappy books) and I got to read them for only a few dollars apiece. At some point I realized I was still spending a lot of dough on books with only a mediocre return of good books to bad.

So I started buying books at thrift stores. I'm not new to that practice in the least. Whereas before I would quickly browse the book section for titles I already knew I liked but lacked in my collection, now I was spending much more time in the book section, adding any old book that looked vaguely interesting to my overflowing armload of fifty cent paperbacks. I judged books on their jacket designs, their titles, their authors, their awards, and (sigh) their Oprah seals of approval. At this point, I've had to stop doing this, because my stack of unread books at home has grown perilously tall, because I read slower than I buy.

I'm working my way through my stack of unread books, which is more of a box of unread books since I haven't been much of a spontaneous unpacker since the move. When I finish one, I pick out another almost randomly. If I just finished a thin book, I try to read a fat one. Some of them are okay, some are a struggle to finish, and some I love so much I could die. Afterwards, the books go into new stacks. Most go into the stack to be given to the used book store in exchange for store credit for which to buy more used books. Fewer reach the dizzying heights of going into my permanent collection, where they will be read and adored and again and again.

And now, since I've been sitting here for twenty minutes trying to come up with a clever way to end this post and have come up short, I will just do it spontaneously.

Macadamia!