You hadn't planned on visiting a used bookstore (your favorite kind) today, but you should have known better; an OPEN sign and a window full of books are always more than enough to lure you into the waiting embrace of any bookstore, if only for a moment.  You should have also remembered that you find exactly the books you are looking for on these unplanned bookstore visits, never on the ones you deliberately pencil in.  It's some cosmic rule that when you forget to think too hard about your list of desired books that the ones you've been waiting for--and the ones you didn't know you needed--will fall right in your lap.

So there you were, running your fingers along the spines of worn and well-used books, pouring over each section of this house-turned-store.  There in the old kitchen sat philosophy, over there in a would-be pantry, old classics a buck a piece.  You spent more time in a closet turned sword and sorcery den, but didn't get swept away until you found a rack of vintage pulp books, the kind with lusty dames and robust fellas on them, each with their own provocative taglines.  You're a sucker for those splashy covers and tawdry tales, always have been even before school officially ended your love affair with Serious Reading.

So you find one of those pulp beauties to add to your collection--the history of an audacious young seaman...who dueled and prayed and sinned his way to magnificent adventure!  Or so the back of the book tells you.  The cover, well, you know the kind of picture it likes to paint.

But it isn't until you are almost out the door with this find that you stumble upon a shelf in the cookbook section and find yourself face to face with a row of books you have been searching for some time and a few you didn't know existed.  There, stacked together like old cronies were a long-searched-for Nero Wolf Cookbook, a must have for any fan of food or this classic mystery series, and a collection of M.F.K. Fisher and Julia Child books you simply must own.  These women of food and words (much like yourself) feed your soul and your mind as they titillate your palate. 

Yes, you must have these.  And the Gone with the Wild Cookbook too, for much the same reasons as you need your swashbuckling pirate pulp adventure, for the cover and the idea more that the story or a recipe for classic Southern grits.  And then there is the novel about cheese and something whimsical; you don't know much more about it but that you must read it.  It has all the makings of a perfect bubble bath read.  These you sweep into your arms, unable to curb your hunger for such tasty reads.

You can already picture your afternoon with your new books spread out on your bed, a tea tray sitting next to you as you flip through one and then another book, lost in a myriad of worlds, feasting on new ideas and images and experiences.  These books, this feast of pulp and culinary musings and tributes to perfectly imaged worlds are a reflection of you.  You are a creature made up of good books and good meals, food experiments and word experiments, usually with a side of wine and cheese.