Book buying

Wow, I have bought a LOT of books lately. I've been trying to downsize, which means I told myself I wouldn't buy any more books for a while. I need to read the ones I have!

But then, for my birthday, I got two bookstore gift certificates. I didn't want to hang onto them for too long because I wanted to be able to tell the person who bought it for me how I had spent it. Ok, really, that's just an excuse, because I realize now that I could have just told them what I planned to buy with them...

Anyway, I looked through my wish list and decided that the one book I had been wanting to read for the longest time was Dale McGowan's Parenting Beyond Belief. So i added it to my online Chapters shopping cart. But then I thought to myself, I'm sure I could find a used copy of this book for cheaper... Then off I went to abebooks.com and, sure enough, I found a much cheaper copy.

Same thing happened with Anton Can Do Magic, a kids' picture book that was on my wishlist. And also with An Awesome Book by Dallas Clayton (I've already received it... and it really is awesome!), The Declaration by Gemma Malley (a dystopia recommended by LP), and Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books (a memoir).

So after all those used book purchases, I narrowed down my order from Chapters to two books that I couldn't find cheaper, used copies of: A Little History of the World by Gombrich (which was written for kids and is apparently not dry reading at all) and A Reader on Reading by Alberto Manguel, which I think I decided on because it was a recommendation for "those who looked at Leave Me Alone I'm Reading..."

Yikes! That's seven books in one month! And I haven't even spent the Librairie du Soleil gift certificate yet...!

I feel like a former alcoholic who just relapsed after a long period of sobriety and got really really drunk.