My university’s book fair came round again. Last year I bought a number of books, and felt very happy about it, but last year was not the same, for two main reasons. One, I didn’t have as much money to spend at the book bazaar last year; and two, I didn’t have an empty bookshelf to fill last year. This year I had a bunch of money budgeted for it, and I was also recently given an empty bookshelf. It’s sitting at work waiting to be taken home. All empty.
I went three times on Thursday, because I had the day off, and then again on Friday after work, and this is what I ended up with:
Then today I went over there with my sister and her boyfriend, and we went in the afternoon, and while I was shopping, the volunteers working there shouted out that all the books were now half off their listed price. So I got another box full of books, and this is what I ended up with:
That’s eighty-seven, I think – unless I miscounted. I got a cute little box set of Winnie the Pooh (for a dollar! total!), and then today I also got a box set of all four books in Paul Scott’s Raj trilogy. In a box! This brings the number of box set books I have to, um, four, I guess. Because I have the three smaller paperbacks that make up Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and they come in a box; and then for my last birthday my mother went to quite a lot of trouble to get me a box set of the Narnia books in the editions I had when I was a little kid. The two piles on the left are the books I haven’t read yet – there’s forty-four of them. Forty-four new books that I have never read before!
I’m going to have to write a nice letter to my work. They gave me this bookshelf because I asked for it, and if they hadn’t, I wouldn’t have bought all these books. I am not wont to let myself go like this, just buying books ceaselessly like a fiend. Ordinarily I don’t buy books unless I am pretty sure I am going to like them. Ordinarily I am swayed by considerations of money and shelf space – don’t want to waste precious shelf space on books I might not like. But this year I got every book I saw that I wanted, and I did not worry about whether I would love each and every one, or whether it was a waste of money. I just bought books like crazy. A bunch of the volunteers there knew me by the end of Saturday, and my picture is up on the university website.