Thursday 22 June 2006

Popped into The Co-op Bookshop on the off-chance of a sale and found five books to add to my collection.

Struck it lucky. There were three tables of sale books, heavily discounted. I really don’t know why I’m buying more books. I purchased 11 books on sale three weeks ago and four more two weeks ago. Today’s offerings were mainly non-fiction titles and, this being a university bookshop, many were of an esoteric cast. But I found a bunch of appealing titles to add to my collection.

I’ve got three bookshelves. All are full. The big one in my study has shelves that are spaced too far apart for normal-sized books. So to accommodate new arrivals, I’m stacking them on top of the books already placed on the shelves. I’m buying a new unit in August from Claphams Furniture in Lane Cove. (They make them up to-size using an external contractor.) All these new purchases will probably already half-fill the new bookshelf when it arrives.

On the sale tables each book had a discount sticker. But because I’m a member of the co-op, when I reached the check-out they deducted an additional 75% off the sale price. Bingo.

The five books I picked up for just under $17 are:

The Transit of Venus, Shirley Hazzard (1980)
Player Piano, Kurt Vonnegut (1952)
Three Dollars, Elliot Perlman (1998)
Left Right Left: Political Essays 1977-2005, Robert Manne (2005)
The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image, Leonard Shlain (1998)

So now I've got tons of stuff to read when I go on holiday in July. Any suggestions on where to start?

3 comments:

TimT said...

I always find the worst items to file away on bookshelves are magazines. It is wrong in so many ways to throw them out, but they can't sit comfortably on the shelves, either.

Matthew da Silva said...

I keep my magazines on the bookshelf in my living room. On top of the bookshelf, that is. Just thrown up there any old way. Except for my Vanity Fairs, which are on a shelf next to my collected works of Shakespeare.

kimbofo said...

Not read any of the books you've snapped up, although I do have a copy of 'Three Dollars' lying in wait.