Why do people hate used books so much?

I've asked myself this question a lot over the past few years, and the only answer I've come up with is that some people feel strange buying a book that's already been read by someone else. Is there such a thing as literary virginity? Most people seem to think so.Think about it:

"I don't want to read it because someone's already read it."
"I don't want to sleep with him/her because someone already has."

Have you ever asked yourself why you do something?

I did something today that I've been putting off for quite some time: I restarted my novel. I've known for quite some time that something wasn't right, and that I was going to have to scrap what I'd done so far, but I didn't know why. About a month ago, it came to me. My error was not in the characterization or my choice of plot, but in how the story was being told.It was to my horror when I realized that I was stuck because I'd chosen the wrong point of view. It's intended to be a character study of one woman, and in my plunging into the writing, I thought it best that I write from her point of view.

The answers are: nowhere interesting, nothing much, thanks. How about you?

I've spent a couple of days buried pretty deeply into the greymatter hacks/mods portion of this site. Seems like every time I do that, I come out two days later with no desire to touch any kind of HTML for a while. If nothing else, it's subsumed the urge to create new designs for at least a few days.Since Tuesday, I haven't touched any kind of design. I think that's the strongest evidence of how much the events in New York have shaken me—they've stopped my creative process for the time being.

After another night of delayed sleep, I made a thoroughly wavering, uncertain decision today to limit how much information I took in about the destruction in New York.

We bandy about the phrase "too much information," but in this case, it can be all too true. For each person it's different—but we each know when it happens—the moment when we know too much, and it's more than we can handle, emotionally or intellectually.I reached my moment about twenty-four hours ago over a specific, painful piece of information. For me, it was learning about a particular incident that the networks all have on videotape but refuse (rightly) to show. Even knowing of its existence was more than I could take. Jeff knows what that particular image was, but I will not repeat it here, for repetition is salt for the wound, not solace.

Yesterday, after an hour's worth of staring at the TV in shock and horror, my instinct for historical preservation kicked in. In the past, we have been able to glean a lot of information from newspapers. But this tragedy was different—the news was updated incrementally as the day went on. Unlike news of yesteryear, when the majority of news was written for a single daily deadline and published, yesterday's news was continually rewritten as the events continued to unfold.

I am part of the chain.

Jeff, on the answering machine this morning: "Amy, turn on the television now."
Ten minutes later, to Kat: "Kat, turn on your television now. What channel? Any channel."
To Brad: "What are they saying up there? Please, tell me something I don't know already."
To Andrew: "Hold on, hold on….my God. It's gone."
To Heather: "Is Andy okay? Have you heard?"