I recognised the cover as soon as I put the book on the table.
Not in the shop. Not while I was carrying it home. Only then, with the bag emptied and the book sitting under the kitchen light.
Marina recognised it too. She pointed towards the spare room.
There was already a copy on the second shelf.
Same title. Same author. Almost the same cover, although the blue on the older one had faded towards grey. I pulled it out and put the two together.
The copy I had just bought was cleaner. Its spine was straight and the pages were still pale around the edges. The other one had a crease across the front and a name written inside in blue biro.
The editions were three years apart.
That was enough to make getting rid of either one feel premature.
I checked the title pages. Different publishers. Different type. The newer copy had a short introduction that the first one didn’t. The older copy opened more easily and had a few pencil marks near the back.
Neither was valuable.
That should have made the decision simple.
It didn’t.
The newer copy had cost two euros, which is exactly the sort of purchase The Two-Euro Rule is meant to prevent. I hadn’t hesitated in the shop because I was sure I wanted it. The problem was that I had already wanted it once.
I tried to remember buying the first copy.
Nothing.
No shop. No market. No idea what I had paid. The name on the flyleaf wasn’t familiar and there was nothing tucked between the pages to help. It could have been on the shelf for six months or six years.
This was more annoying than buying the same book twice.
I had forgotten the first purchase completely.
There are enough books in the room now for memory to become unreliable. I know roughly where things are. Spanish books at eye level. Travel lower down. Hardbacks together where the shelf is strongest. That works when I’m looking for something at home.
It is less useful in a shop thirty kilometres away.
I have tried cataloguing before. A notebook lasted twelve entries. A spreadsheet survived one wet Sunday and was never opened again. Photographing each shelf worked until I moved seven books and made every picture slightly wrong.
The sensible answer would be an app. Scan each barcode, add the older books by hand and check the list before buying anything.
I know how that would go.
Three evenings entering books. An hour deciding which fields matter. Another hour correcting publisher names. Then I would forget to check it in the shop.
So I made a smaller rule.
If a book feels familiar, it probably is.
That doesn’t mean I can’t buy it. It means I have to find a reason stronger than recognition. A better translation. Useful notes. A copy good enough to replace one that is falling apart. Something more convincing than the vague feeling that I have always meant to read it.
I kept the older copy.
The introduction in the newer one was useful, but I could read that without keeping the whole book. The older copy had been read properly by somebody. Not heavily marked, just a line here and there and one doubtful question mark in the margin.
The clean copy went into a bag by the door.
It stayed there for nine days because apparently deciding to remove a duplicate and actually removing it are separate jobs.
I eventually took it to a charity shop with two other books. The woman behind the counter looked at the cover and said she had read it years ago.
I nearly told her I had bought it twice.
There didn’t seem much point.
