Super ways to buy books
Several people have made posts in the last week of 'all the books what i done gone read in the last year'. I considered following suit, but I can't be bothered to go through my shelves and besides, I wouldn't want to admit to some of them. instead, a quick look at my favourite ways of acquiring new books
1) 3 for the price of 2 deals. Most bookshops do these, and the great thing about this sort of deal is that you can pretend to yourself that any given book of the ones you bought was the free one. So whilst you're sitting there spluttering with apoplexy and with your monocle flying out of your eye and landing in your drink with a plop as you read the latest outright lie in Tony Blair's New Britain: My Vision for a young country you can confort yourself with the thought that you didn't pay a bean for it, whilst the next day you can be thrilling yourself to the latest in Arturo Perez-Reverte's Captain Alatriste series and thinking to yourself "What a cracking book and it didn't cost me a penny! I'm teh winZ0r!"
2) Amazon. My favourite way of using Amazon is to surf it from time to time and addd interesting-looking things to the shopping basket, and then once every six months or so buy the collected set. This leads to me getting books which I'd forgotten I clicked, books which I have no idea whatsoever why I might ever have wanted, and books which turn out to be extremely pleasant surprises.
3) Charity shops. I don't know why, but I buy stuff I'd never think of at other times from charity shops. Certainly I've acquired more of the 'classics' from them than from any other source - Balzac, Zola, Kafka, Schneizer, Koestler and more have all come from the £1.50 rack at the British Heart Foundation shop. Perhaps the sort of people who give their unwanted books to charity shops are just more educated and intellectual than those who don't.
That said I've also picked up such dire and witless tomes as Richard Harris' Hannibal and Amy Jenkins' Honeymoon from charity shops, so I might be competely wrong.
1) 3 for the price of 2 deals. Most bookshops do these, and the great thing about this sort of deal is that you can pretend to yourself that any given book of the ones you bought was the free one. So whilst you're sitting there spluttering with apoplexy and with your monocle flying out of your eye and landing in your drink with a plop as you read the latest outright lie in Tony Blair's New Britain: My Vision for a young country you can confort yourself with the thought that you didn't pay a bean for it, whilst the next day you can be thrilling yourself to the latest in Arturo Perez-Reverte's Captain Alatriste series and thinking to yourself "What a cracking book and it didn't cost me a penny! I'm teh winZ0r!"
2) Amazon. My favourite way of using Amazon is to surf it from time to time and addd interesting-looking things to the shopping basket, and then once every six months or so buy the collected set. This leads to me getting books which I'd forgotten I clicked, books which I have no idea whatsoever why I might ever have wanted, and books which turn out to be extremely pleasant surprises.
3) Charity shops. I don't know why, but I buy stuff I'd never think of at other times from charity shops. Certainly I've acquired more of the 'classics' from them than from any other source - Balzac, Zola, Kafka, Schneizer, Koestler and more have all come from the £1.50 rack at the British Heart Foundation shop. Perhaps the sort of people who give their unwanted books to charity shops are just more educated and intellectual than those who don't.
That said I've also picked up such dire and witless tomes as Richard Harris' Hannibal and Amy Jenkins' Honeymoon from charity shops, so I might be competely wrong.