“It’s mostly younger men stealing the books. They think it’s an existential rite of passage to steal their homeboy.”

– 

Zack Zook, general manager of BookCourt in Brooklyn, to the New York Times.

I spent some time during my salad days as a book shoplifter (thank boredom and Crimethinc’s oddly extreme effect on the older kids I was trying to impress) and, after reading this quote, I realized that the only titles I actually remember shoplifting are Tropic of Cancer, Slaughterhouse Five, and Naked Lunch. As much as it pains me to have participated in what was apparently an “existential rite of passage,” at least I have cool homeboys.