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May's haul of books

It's official: I'm buying books again. Why, after the book-buying ban, all the culling and the TBR challenge and all that?

Well, buying second-hand books is a cheap form of retail therapy (especially when the charity shop is having a clearance sale) and as I don't need any more clothes at the moment I need something else to shop for. Also because I culled some books I didn't want to keep and let go some stuff I had no use for that was cluttering up precious shelf-space in my apartment and I again have shelf-space for books.

But I'm not just buying any old books. I'm being fairly picky and not buying as much on speculation as I used to (I was using the charity shops and second hand shops like libraries when the book-buying mania was at its worst) and I'm buying more large format and coffee-table books, and novels in hard covers in preference to softcover novels, and more non-fiction than fiction. Basically books I think I might definitely want to keep, books that are expensive to buy new (and that I know I'll want to keep), and books that will look good on my coffee table and make for nice browsing.

Below is May's haul, guarded by my cockatiel, Ljúfur. His friend, Quasimodo, flew off when he saw the camera, and you can see that my poor, flightless baby is straining to see where his friend has gone.

I was so happy with the haul that I have already read four of them and am close to finishing the fifth. Click on the image to see it full size.


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