I Buy Books Like Some Women Buy Shoes

 Picture yourself searching for a book.  Are you in a big box, independent or used bookstore? Are you at the library, a library sale or online?  Do you buy new books or used books? Do you buy the hottest new bestsellers? Do you shop by genre, author or title or just browse? Are you smiling as you answer these questions?

I am an avid but frugal reader.  Not for me the bestseller hot off the press. Through the years, I’ve exchanged bags of books with friends and haunted used bookstores.  I can’t see paying full price to feed my three books a week habit.  I’d visit the library if there were one convenient to my house, but no such luck.

I regularly check the sale table at Barnes & Noble, but my guilty pleasure is library sales.  Not only do I find books by my favorite authors, but I also stumble across authors who are new to me. It doesn’t seem like a big gamble to try a new author at a bargain cost of under $2.  If I don’t like the book, I feel no guilt at leaving it unfinished and donating it for the next quarterly sale.

Last year, I inherited my sister’s Kindle when she bought a new one.  She left it loaded with books, but it was six months before I tried it out.  I finally took it on a trip to the Washington Coast and read every one of the Twilight books, while touring the Olympic Peninsula where they take place.

Even then, I didn’t start routinely reading on the Kindle, as I still had a supply of “real” books from all the library sales.  Do you know you can bring home 15-20 books for under $20?

Ah, but these days I have a new addiction. A friend turned me on to BookBub in February, and now I’m hooked on eBooks.  First, you visit the BookBub website and create a profile of the kinds of books you like. Then, you get daily emails offering a selection of eBooks from Amazon or Barnes & Noble, typically for $3.99 each or less. There are even free eBooks.

I have almost 50 books on my Kindle, and I’ve found plenty of new authors to try.  My current excuse for this ridiculous number of books is my upcoming vacation to Greece which includes two nine- hour flights.  Heaven forbid I find myself without a book!  I don’t think I’m in any danger of that at the moment. Do you?

PS. I buy lots of shoes too.