A mammoth shopping spree, wheeeeee!

Aaaaaah, nothing soothes the Shopgirl Holiday Blues quite like a little bout of book shopping in OTHER PEOPLE'S stores.  I didn't go as far as the indie bookshop on the other side of town, but I DID raid the four closest charity shops, the library and a conveniently placed stall...  And yes, I DID get THE LOOK from my mother when I returned with a heaving canvas bag.  She was 'very disappointed' because 'we'll be moving soon'... however, since this may not be for another 18 months for all we know, I'm not too worried!  At least, I'm not too worried now that she's stepped AWAY from the carrier bag and stopped looking quite so threatening.  :)

Sooo, what did I buy, I hear you ask?  Well, my little sunflowers, pull up a chair, because I have plenty to report!  First up, the delights of our local Air Ambulance shop...  This shop is very new in town, but I already love it.  Upstairs they have a wall of bookshelves, two narrow shelves of DVDs and two big comfy leather sofas, which is AWESOMENESS especially when I have too many books to look through and need somewhere to perch.  They obviously have some regular patrons who donate shiny new fiction, good non-fiction and a healthy dose of YA alongside the usual charity shop fare, so I've never left empty-handed yet.  Far from it, in fact!  I only went in last week so not much had changed, but I DID buy two things.  I bought Lost in Translation on DVD for a very reasonable £1.95, and an unread copy of High Fidelity by Nick Hornby for a delicious 95p.  Yes, I already HAVE a copy of High Fidelity - but this one is so much PRETTIER and has rock posters on the front and I love it, and did I mention it was only 95p?

Our local hospice shop was a dud - all granny fiction and cheap thrillers - so my next stop was Age UK, which is usually so-so for books.  Sometimes I find something awesome (like the last couple of times), sometimes I walk away without succumbing to anything.  Happily, on this occasion not only did they have some BRILLIANT titles, but they also had an ALL PAPERBACK BOOKS 49 PENCE SALE!  Aaaargh!  Such beautiful, beautiful words.  So, for the bargain price of £2.45, I got five lovely shiny books.  Snowdrops by A.D. Miller is one I've been after from the library/Amazon anyway, because it was on the Man Booker shortlist.  A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan has been on my wishlist since it appeared on the TV Book Club last summer.  Chuck Palahniuk is one of those cult authors that always seems to be checked out of the library, no matter how long you wait, so I snatched up a copy of Fight Club.  There was a practically unread copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, which I've never had the urge to read but have heard great things about - for 49p, I wasn't arguing!  And finally, I just had to buy Craig Revel Horwood's autobiography All Balls and Glitter, because he's kinda grown on me and now I think he's pretty FAB-YOU-LOUS, dahling...

Last on my charity shop list was Mind, which again, can be a fruit-laden tree of bookish delights... or a bit of a dead shrub.  Once again I was in luck, and came away with another three bargainous books!  I snatched up E.M. Delafield's Diary of a Provincial Lady, which has been on my wishlist for YEARS (even the first PAGE makes me laugh), for a miniscule £2.50.  Simon Napier-Bell's Black Vinyl, White Powder was a fortuitous find at £2 - I picked it up because the title was cool and whaddya know?  Turns out it's a fifty-year history of the British music business!  Great!  And lastly, I threw in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness for £1, just because I'm SURE someone wrote about it the other day, and I haven't read it yet, so what the heck...

Only a couple left now, I swearz.  I was returning a handful of books to the library - the 'YOU CANNOT RENEW THIS BOOK ANY MORE, SLOWPOKE!' date is rapidly approaching and there was no way I was going to finish 'em all, so I'm PRIORITISING - thus providing another prime book-searching opportunity.  The interwebs faithfully promised me that The Forest of Hands and Teeth was on the shelf, but I couldn't find it anywhere, not in adult fiction or fantasy fiction or teen fiction. Lying interwebs.  I DID find Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding but it was BLOODY ENORMOUS so I thought I'd wait for the paperback.  Or another time when I haven't just bought a million books already.  So the only book I got back OUT of the library was Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, which was rather fascinatingly shelved on the 'True Crime' section alongside a book called Murder and Mayhem in the Peak District (pffft, the closest we get to mayhem is the queues at the fish and chip shop come lunchtime) and the worryingly titled How to Kill.  Good job that one wasn't checked out, really.  And LASTLY, just as I thought I was safe, I passed a Rotary Club stall and spotted a heaving box of books and THERE, crumpled and battered, was a copy of Jemima J by Jane Green, which the lovely Miss Jess recommended ages ago and which I've been looking out for ever since.  Happy days!

Aaaah, what a delight it is to pop out to return library books and buy a bottle of milk, only to return with eleven books, a DVD, milk and two intriguing new 'fajita chicken pizzas'.  This rampant book buying all ties in very nicely with this article I read today, which is by Tom Cox and is loosely about bookshelf reorganisation but also contains this wonderful paragraph that I TOTALLY GET:

"Of course, some of these excesses are simply a by-product of that elastic thing that can happen to time when we are in a bookshop, where our sheer good intentions and excitement overrule everything we have previously learned about how many hours there are in a day. Just as I keep on subscribing to the New Yorker magazine in the expectation of a lengthy, debilitating illness that will allow me to catch up on 15 years' worth of issues I have hardly skimmed, I'm keeping The Golden Bough in preparation for the non-fatal heart attack that will ultimately enable me to read it. That's a lot of sickness in my future, but I'm embracing it. I suppose that's the joy of a proper, unexpurgated book reorganising session: it makes you look forward to the good times, and the bad."

Can't we all relate to that a tiny bit?  It may be knackering, but I get a bit of a kick out of reorganising my bookshelves, or even just combing through them all looking for a particular volume.  I forget what I have, hidden away on the back rows or on the top shelves, and finding them all again is like burrowing into a treasure chest.  And I quite frequently catch myself thinking things like "Huh, a little bout of flu wouldn't be SO bad, would it?  I mean, not so I get really really sick or anything... but just think how much I could read, sitting in bed drinking tea for a week!"  Come on, 'fess up, we've all been there.

Okay, well, today is my DAY OFF, so I'm going to go make some more coffee and sit and read Simon Mason's Moon Pie.  No, it's not a library book, and yes, it's a tad 'younger' than I would normally read, but I think it's going to be AWESOME.  It's about eleven year-old Martha, who is caring for her brother as her father descends into alcoholism after her mum's death.  Not the cheeriest of subjects, but I have to say that despite the underlying sadness it is SO FUNNY!  The characters are wonderful - Mason's really got a child's voice down - and Martha's little brother Tug is just the cutest jellybean...  So, onwards!  Many books to read!  And I want to enjoy today because after this it's six days of Easter in TouristTown, otherwise known as HELL ON EARTH, and I need as much R&R as I can get beforehand to save my already tenuous grasp on sanity.  Laters, all!