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Thursday, November 13, 2008

Booking Through Thursday

This week's BTT question:
I’ve asked, in the past, about whether you more often buy your books, or get them from libraries. What I want to know today, is, WHY BUY?
Even if you are a die-hard fan of the public library system, I’m betting you have at least ONE permanent resident of your bookshelves in your house. I’m betting that no real book-lover can go through life without owning at least one book. So … why that one? What made you buy the books that you actually own, even though your usual preference is to borrow and return them?
If you usually buy your books, tell me why. Why buy instead of borrow? Why shell out your hard-earned dollars for something you could get for free?

I don't buy books very often. We have a pretty good public library and I do book reviews for work, so I get a lot of my books from there.
If I do buy books, I try to go for specials, or secondhand ones, because books can be prohibitively expensive to buy here.
However, once in a while one slips past my radar and the conversation I have with myself looks something like this:
"Hey look! The new -- "
"No!"
"But it's payday! I have monies!"
"You have bills! No!"
"It's the new Terry Pratchett one. And it's on special."
"N- wait ... Terry Pratchet?? That's different. On special you say? So we're saving monies?"
"Yes."
"Then what are we waiting for???"

4 comments:

SmilingSally said...

I think I've experienced a similar conversation! Here's my answer: http://bookcritiques.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

I only get a few books a month, I try not to get more than I can read in a decent time frame. But I enjoy owning all my books :)www.thesocialfrog.com

gautami tripathy said...

Well, I relate to that conversation!

Must buy!

Anonymous said...

Loll, that does sound familiar. I did shell out for the new Terry Pratchett one, for my dad's b'day, and then saw that it went down in price a week later... He finished it in a day though so I guess it was worth it.