There are certain situations in which my normal resolve crumbles and I feel compelled to buy books I will never read. Examples:

I make eye contact with an author who is sitting abjectly alone while at the bookstore for a signing. I feel a tingle in what must be my conscience and have to make conversation, ending up buying two or three unwanted books that get passed off to my sister.

I ask the wild-haired bookstore employee if they have a copy of a certain book and he runs hither and yon to locate it, muttering under his breath about conspiracies to mis-shelve books. In order to get out alive, I buy the book. Most recently this was a worthless piece of dreck called “Things to Bring, S#!T to Do... and other inventories of anxiety”. I’ll stick with my own anxieties and compulsions, thank you.

I go to a discussion of a local author’s self-published self-help business guide to surrounding yourself with the right type of people (a magician, a sage, and a fool). Feel sorry for the author because only about 10 people showed up for the discussion. Am unable to sneak out after the reading (how can you sneak when there are only 10 people in a room that holds a couple hundred?) and buy the book.