There is nothing more depressing than coming out of a bookstore empty-handed. Well, there actually is. It is coming empty-handed out of two bookstores in a row. Right in the middle of Zagreb, within a stone’s throw of each other, both stores are well-stocked with foreign books, too. All the trees felled, all the ink spilled… Which is why I do not enter these stores easily. I often walk past them stealthily, as if I somehow managed to miss them once again. I know perfectly well how depressing it is to be coming empty-handed out of these two bookstores one after another.

Addendum (June 8, 2016)

As luck would have it, one of the two bookstores in question stopped selling foreign books a few years ago. This made things quite a bit easier for me at the time. But much has changed the last year or so, for I have stopped buying books at long last. Although I keep returning to some of the books I have already read, often many times over, I do not want to read any new ones. And this includes all the so-called classics I have missed so far. In short, bookstores are history for me. There is no more coming out of them empty-handed because I do not enter them in the first place. Phew! My liberation earlier this year is not called liberation for nothing. And every book is very like the proverbial ball and chain.