Bargain Blowout

Whilst reading and catching up with people’s blogs I was meandering with Simon at Stuck In A Book who had just recently bought some Somerset Maugham books, 10 to be precise for a staggering £9.99 or £10. Now I was not interested in the Maugham books, although maybe I should be but I am always interested in a bargain and always where books are concerned. So I wandered across to The Book People and had a mooch around. Can you mooch around an online store? Anyway I mooched and I spotted a bit of a bargain

A selection of 4 books of The Worst Witch, and I would probably have not paid any attention to them if it had not been for a recent post on another Simon’s blog about them and all my childhood memories came floating back, and especially as I am into reading books about schools at the moment. Great bargain so into the shopping trolley, should I mooch around any further? What harm can it do?

But oh look another bargain.

Discovered that M.C.Beaton had done more than Hamish Macbeth and Agatha Raisin, had spotted Penelope goes to Portsmouth first (that is where I am) and downloaded a sample to my kindle but then saw the first book in the series, downloaded that and got no further. Then I spotted them on Rochester Reader’s blog.  Pointed them out to my mum who got her kindle out and downloaded (and bought I think) the first book, Emily goes to Exeter and has talked about it with me. So as not to miss out and also because we can share the books they had to be added to the trolley. Time is getting on, surely I cannot mooch anymore?

Oh but look some more M.C. Beaton

The first 10, yes 10 Agatha Raisin books. Having just read The Quiche of Death back in February and have many to catch up on, I thought I might do a little bit of reading whilst off work with a character I think I love to hate! So into the shopping trolley they went. I cannot possibly carrying on mooching round can I. 17 books is a bit mad and the poor delivery person has to carry them up two flights of stairs to get to my front door. But oh look what is that I see…

Well if I am going to order 17 books I might as well just chuck in another 8 and be done with it? Again only just got into Daisy Dalrymple and have read the first book and wanted to carry on with the series and all things being in order I do like to read them that way! So now be strong, no more mooching just grab your trolley and get the hell out of the store!

So I did, and all these lovely books arrived (thanks nice delivery person) Tuesday. All nice bright colours and designs really cheered me.  I shamelessly have worked out that to buy them all at their cover price would have cost me £166.75 and I paid £28.96.  That is £1.16 a book.  Bargain! But at the same time my conscience pricks and I do wonder how book shops survive when such companies can afford to charge these amounts of money?

It did take me a while to justify my purchase to myself, especially because I was buying two books which I had already read and owned, as well as a recent purchase in a charity shop of one of Carola Dunn’s books I had not got round to reading yet. It will be given back to the charity shop to be sent on its journey once again. As for the two brand new, already read books. Well I have not quite decided what to do with those yet. Perhaps they need to be set out on a journey to see who they meet?

Well I need to unpack my trolley and lock it firmly away for a least a couple of days to recover from the shock it might have had! Have any of you bought in excess before? Or are you much more strong willed than me? (The answer to the last question is probably yes!)