Keeping tabs

I need a straightjacket, one specifically to keep my hands bound to my body so that I won’t reach for my purse to pay for more books.

If there is one area where I know I need to exercise more restraint in my life, it’s books, or rather, the buying of books.

This month, I’ve gone through 5 books already and am into my 6th book. Normally I don’t keep track of the number of books I read but Rizal asked me early in the month how many books I read. I told him on the average, maybe four. These were numbers I sort of just plucked out of thin air because who keeps track of how many books they read anyway? The national average, I think, is less than one.

The reason I go through the number of books that I do may be because I read mainly YA fiction or kiddie lit. Sarah Dessen and E.L Konigsberg take considerably less time to get through than either Raymond E. Feist or Jennifer Weiner.

However, my record for this month so far were The Devil Wears Prada, Goodnight Nobody, Little Earthquakes, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, and Up From Jericho Tel. Only two of those titles are YA fiction or kiddie lit.

Back to the issue at hand: I bought three books from PayLess yesterday. I really could not help it. I was there to scout around for used and cheaper copies of Feist’s Riftwar Saga. I found Silverthorn but as I am just rereading Magician: Apprentice, I thought it pointless to jump the gun and purchase Silverthorn even though it only cost RM6. While looking around in the Fantasy section, Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea caught my attention; Rizal had misplaced my copy and now I have the entire Earthsea Chronicles minus the first book. Buy! At only RM7.90.

I walked over to General Fiction, browsed around and stumbled upon Anne Rice’s erotic classic, The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty. What luck! If there is one genre that’s as close to endangered here, it’s erotic fiction. Or anything erotic, for that matter (romance does not count). And it was only RM15! One shelf up and I came across Megan McCafferty’s Sloppy Firsts for a reasonable RM12. I couldn’t believe my luck. New, it costs a whopping RM55.66!

How does a bookworm and bibliophile like me resist such temptation? Where else can I get three books in generally good conditions for RM34.90? I can just about buy a single new tome of fiction for that price.

My three books? An absolute steal!