I buy a lot of books secondhand but find the price of new ones prohibitive. What I really enjoy is sitting down with the computer and looking at what future releases are listed on Amazon or other retailers and then ordering them from the library so that I get a very welcome email every so often telling me that some books that I've been waiting for are available for collection. Nothing like deferred pleasure sometimes.
I rarely borrow, but I usually buy, either cheap when there is an offer, or second hand.
Books in Dutch are so horribly expensive that I have now stopped reading in that language on principle; No kidding, 20 euro for a book of like 400 pages is normal in some cases. For good stuff that is. On principle, I do not pay so much for a book without notes (truly!). It is only pages with letters on them, for God's sake, not even illustrations or hardback or anything.
At about 7 pounds, I find that also expensve, but at least you get some notes. Mostly, I just buy those penguins second hand. The best of both worlds.
Maybe it's a bit stingy... I suppose I am a bit too realistic sometimes.
One has to laugh before being happy, because otherwise one risks to die before having laughed.
"Je crains [...] que l'âme ne se vide à ces passe-temps vains, et que le fin du fin ne soit la fin des fins." (Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Acte III, Scène VII)
I was going to post something similar, and still might. I know that I spent 120$ USD on books on Amazon last year, that I got 40 books from pbs [say at 3$ a pop]and perhaps another hundred from my local bookstore. So basically I spend average a buck a day.
It's a pretty expensive hobby/lifestyle. Especially when I consider that the combined cost of only the top 15 books on my wishlist even used cost 350$!
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