Where do you get your books?

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2005-12-27 09:29:25 From: JmeDoom (Asheville, The Sea)
I get my books from (in order) Used bookstores (my town has three really good ones which are constantly getting great books in), Barnes and Nobel (bleh, but they make it easy), Amazon.com, from my friends (as gifts or pilfered when they aren't looking), the library, the trunk of my car (I can't tell you how many times I have found new books in the trunk of my car. It's crazy) and yard sales (sometimes there are books besides Readers Digest Condensed Books at yard sales, but not usually).

2005-12-27 13:56:38: dotann (Bay Area)

heh, I get mine almost exclusively from 2nd hand bookstores, but some books just never show up in 2nd hand bookstores, makes you wonder! Like my collection of Philip K Dick, I got a couple of them here and there, but had to buy the rest from amazon.

After my sudden realization that we've got five bookshelves full of books already, I've made the decision to borrow books from library instead of buying them, two months and $40 library fine later, my latest decision is to only borrow books from friends. ;)

2005-12-27 18:16:59: Orpheus

Public library---should have been a good source. But...... Well, Alibris is the place to go for old books.

2005-12-27 18:38:45: AD

Library and used bookstores

2005-12-28 03:58:20: melancolia (Vienna, Manila)

when i was still in manila, secondhand bookstores are always available almost everywhere. where i now live, getting secondhand books (cheapskate that i am)in english is quite difficult. though there's the british bookshop, which sells overpriced books in english, i am thankful that there are stil options where to buy books like eBay. seriously, i completed my Griffin and Sabine trilogy, thanks to a certain lady from Britain and ebay

2005-12-28 06:46:32: JmeDoom (Asheville, The Sea)

I do think finding a book that you have been searching for in a used bookstore is exciting, but if I really want to read it now, I'll buy it new. For instance, I knew that Joan Didion's Year of Magical Thinking wouldn't be in any used bookstore for awhile, so I bought it at Barnes and Nobel.

My parents own a bookstore, and they use Alibris a lot for out of print or older books.

One things I can never find in Used bookstores is good new poetry. Evidently, people don't ever buy these new and trade them, or maybe when people buy a good work of poetry it's more personal than a novel, so they keep it.

I agree with Dotann, friends are much easier/less expensive than libraries, plus I don't get shushed as much by most of my friends. My problem with libraries is that I can never bring myself to take my books back on time. I'll look at the over due books on my shelf all day long and not have the will power to get up and go to the library... is something wrong with me?

2005-12-28 13:26:51: AD

>My problem with libraries is that I can never bring myself to take my
>books back on time. I'll look at the over due books on my shelf all
>day long and not have the will power to get up and go to the
>library... is something wrong with me?

Yes :-)
Just kidding, but really the library is a great place to try books you aren't sure you'll like. Plus, there are books on tape/CD, so you can do other things while enjoying a book. I've found some new authors that I like through audio books because the local libraries circulate the audio books through the branches, so the selection is limited and forces me to pick something unfamiliar.

I like to "travel light" and have decided to limit myself to ONE bookshelf of fiction and ONE of non-fiction. If I want to re-read something I like, the library usually still has it.

2005-12-29 15:25:30: dotann (Bay Area)

>My problem with libraries is that I can never bring myself to take my
>books back on time. I'll look at the over due books on my shelf all
>day long and not have the will power to get up and go to the
>library... is something wrong with me?

I have the same problem (thus the $40 library fine) and consider it a character flaw, not exactly library-specific. Once a book (or a bill, in my case) is overdue, it feels doomed already, as if nothing can redeem my mistake, and there's very little motivation to bring it back to the library anyways just to lessen the fine... ;)

2005-12-29 23:46:39: Orpheus

Yeah, that powerlessness and the subsequent resignation to the God of Small Sins......

2005-12-30 07:02:09: JmeDoom (Asheville, The Sea)

I believe that I still owe the library...and from what I hear they have been getting more aggressive with their collection practices. I had a friend get roughed up by some librarian muscle over the matter of some dilatory Percy Blysshe Shelly. ;-)