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PERSONAL/REVIEW: Shopping experiences
Aug. 25th, 2007 03:45 pmI am currently using a library to access the internet, because I have what feels like a backlog of reviews - I've been reading a lot over August, enjoying the time that my holidays have afforded me to do so. Two days ago I shopped for more books (I was at a new town, so obviously I had to!). At a second-hand bookshop I'd wandered into the realm of the backroom, where the boxes lie in piles or full boxes. In some shops, this is the front room too.
So I picked up a book that had yet to be priced (Finding Minerva by Frances Thomas, which appealed because it's set in an alternate Britain, one in which the Romans never left). In the rare instances when this has happened to me before, the shopkeeper pulls a figure out of the air/their years of experience or say they aren't authorised to do that. This time, the bookseller opened up her laptop and checked the going rate at Amazon. I was amused, because this had never happened to me before and paid my £3. Well, I paid more than that, because I had got other books (including a May Wynne and a girls book that I think is older still).
What happened next isn't a first - sadly - and is a good example of Murphy's Law at work. It also wiped the grin off my face. I saw the same book - which I'd never seen before - was being sold at Oxfam for £1.99. I should, of course, have known better than to look at the price. Oh well, I got a bargain at Oxfam which sort of cancels it out (I can't be the only one whose brain works that way!?)
At about the same time, I was reading
Polly of Primrose Hill: Kathleen O'Farrell, Peal Press, no date, though it was written in Elizabeth II's reign.
( Read more... )
So I picked up a book that had yet to be priced (Finding Minerva by Frances Thomas, which appealed because it's set in an alternate Britain, one in which the Romans never left). In the rare instances when this has happened to me before, the shopkeeper pulls a figure out of the air/their years of experience or say they aren't authorised to do that. This time, the bookseller opened up her laptop and checked the going rate at Amazon. I was amused, because this had never happened to me before and paid my £3. Well, I paid more than that, because I had got other books (including a May Wynne and a girls book that I think is older still).
What happened next isn't a first - sadly - and is a good example of Murphy's Law at work. It also wiped the grin off my face. I saw the same book - which I'd never seen before - was being sold at Oxfam for £1.99. I should, of course, have known better than to look at the price. Oh well, I got a bargain at Oxfam which sort of cancels it out (I can't be the only one whose brain works that way!?)
At about the same time, I was reading
Polly of Primrose Hill: Kathleen O'Farrell, Peal Press, no date, though it was written in Elizabeth II's reign.
( Read more... )
