Box of books in the trash

Who says serendipity is dead? While I was jogging around my neighborhood yesterday, my run was interrupted by one of my favorite things to stumble upon—a box of books being thrown out. This happenstance allows me to (1) acquire several more books of marginal relevance to me for the nearly always margin-defeating cost of free and (2) believe there is some sort of destiny in my reading and them and extracting what I can extract from them, all while (3) feeling like I’m performing a noble act of unconsumption, resuscitating something old and avoiding an unnecessary new purchase. If we need to be constantly rearranging our belongings to be continually reaffirming our ever-unstable self-concept, why not do it through acquisitive acts outside the economy?