I’ve been told I have a problem, my family hasn’t gone as far as an intervention but I always feel they are on the verge. I am on course talking about my addiction to buying books.
I saw a meme a while ago that said book buying and book reading were two different hobbies and I think I have taken that as my mantra. I buy almost exclusively Fantasy and Sci-Fi with some exceptions. I have a nice collection of Agatha Christie novels and really enjoyed reading some of them.
I recently discovered Brandon Sanderson and he is quickly becoming my favorite author of all time. His world-building and characters are amazing. I get pulled into his books and find I can get through them very quickly. I am also trying to build up my collection of signed books from him. In the image above you can see the large hardbacks for his Stormlight Archive series, when I was introduced to his book I started buying the signed versions and have Oathbringer and Rythm of war signed. I then bought the first one Way of Kings from Waterstones. Words of Radiance were harder to get hold of. I must have called/emailed about 35 bookstores trying to find a copy of this book. eBay always had copied but they were priced £100+ and I didn’t want to spend that much on a £25 hardback. After a long fruitless search, I was resigned to knowing if I wanted it it was going to have to be eBay. In the end, there was one in my basket for £85, but I dithered and didn’t buy it, a few days later the seller messaged people watching the book offering it for £65. At that point, I realised this was as cheap as I was going to get it. Now I have all of them, if Brandon ever comes to the UK I will be going to try and get the first two signed as well.
I fully intend to read all of the books I own, I would say i am probably at about a third, but if the book-buying continues this may be fighting an uphill battle. A thoroughly enjoyable battle mind.
When my son moves out later this year my office will be moving back downstairs. At that point, I will have this room as a pure library. I will get about 3-4 more bookcases and a nice chair to have in here for reading. I can’t wait, my own library.
in the meantime the obsession (i mean hobby) continues. I have made this worse over the last couple of days. I sold a phone I was done with and flush with cash I popped along to my local Waterstones. I was casually browsing when the new illustrated edition of the Lord of the Rings jumped out from the shelves and into my hands. “buy me” it called out to me.
I was helpless and so popped down to the tills and paid £60 for this amazing book. “ahhh” I sighed, that should hold me for a while. The next day we were off to Whitby….. while there I frequented some bookshops, I was tricked cruelly by the cashiers to part with more money for more books. I tried to resist but it was useless. So, I ended up buying 3 more Gothic fiction books, a signed fantasy book by an author I haven’t read yet, and 2 more Terry Pratchet books.
The Terry Pratchet books were a surprise. I thought I had the whole collection of the hardback collection. Then there were two here, one I hadn’t seen and one I couldn’t find anywhere when I last looked. Then I noticed one that I also didn’t have in the hardback collection. I had to buy 4 of them in normal hardbacks. It would seem these have now been released.
This morning I bought the missing ones and pre-ordered Pratchets Biography. So much money spent in the last few days on books. But remember, I don’t have a problem!
