Browsing books(ales)

The annual book sales began again this January.  Like in any sale in this one too the early bird catches the bookworm, so the trick to making the best finds should be to be at the spot as soon as the salespeople start loading the books on the shelves. Only this year it turns out they do it gradually, adding a few books at a time to a number of categories, including my personal favorite, paperback fiction! So the jury's still out on the question on who catches the worm this year - possibly the patient buyer who has time to come back to the store over and over again.


Now your annual book sale is the thing the serial reader most looks forward to each year, but it's not without it's pitfalls. The theory of the sale sounds perfect, right? Pristine books for half off with as wide a selection as you can hope for? The reality is never as rosy, for me at least there are two major things to be on the lookout for.

First of all the books on sale tend to be the ones I've already bought. If they're  by my favorite authors, I naturally bought them as soon as they came out. And if I was able to restrain myself and wait for the paperback to come out there's little hope I'll find anything really interesting on that shelf by the time the books are on sale.

Now the other problem also has to do with the selection, but from a different perspective. The shelves are bursting with lovely books that judging by the cover all look SO interesting. But as I have no idea who the writers are, there's a very real chance I end up with a bag full of silly books that are just poorly written. The danger is even greater come summer when the left over books form the winter sale are half off from their earlier half off price.

The cookbook find - highly recommend it!

A few years back I went completely nuts and bought two bag fulls of paperbacks for a pittance and am now wondering whatever possessed me. The only one of the books I've so far actually managed to read was an extremely bad detective story involving a lost Shakespeare's manuscript. The other's have, after a long futile wait to be read, been alphabetized onto my bookshelf with little hope of ever being read. The only ones I remember buying are Where The Wild Things Are by Dave Eggers and The Last King of Scotland, both of which I actually might read one of these days except that I wonder if the Last King won't be as violent as the film was (I'm not overly keen on violence...).

 This year I managed to avoid most of the pitfalls and only fell for a cookbook recommended by a friend over an extremely yummy dinner cooked from this very cookbook, and a pilates book, which may end up gathering dust on the shelf of the couch potato that I am.

So my point being? I have no point! Happy sales, everyone!