22 February 2012

Book sales

I went to the Exclusive Books summer sale yesterday, and came home with seven books for R231.00
  • Bartlett, Rosamund Benn, Anna. 2007. Literary Russia: a guide. New York: Overlook Duckworth.
  • Callow, Philip. 1998. Chekhov: the hidden ground. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee.
  • Conradi, Peter J. 2010. Iris Murdoch, a writer at war: Letters & diaries 1938-46. London: Short.
  • Conrad, Joseph. 2010. Heart of darkness. London: Collins Classics.
  • Crystal, David. 2007. By hook or by crook: a journey in search of English. London: HarperPress.
  • Maher, Paul. 2007. Jack Kerouac's American journey. New York: Thunder's Mouth.
  • Sandison, David Vickers, Graham. 2006. Neal Cassady: the fast life of a Beat hero. London: Omnibus.

About halfway through the sale they reduce the sale prices by 50%, and so books one could not usually afford suddenly become affordable. The interesting thing here is that most of the books are ones that one never sees on the shelves. They are not being sold to make space on the shelves by reducing unsold stock. I suppose if one knew about them, one could order them specially, but in that case one could only afford to buy one or two of them, not seven.

So I'm not complaining about the sales, far from it. I'm just wondering where they were offered for sale in the first place. I suspect that they were remaindered overseas, and specially imported for the sales.

Most of the ones I picked up are literary biographies, which I enjoy reading. Sometimes I think I'm weird. I often enjoy reading biographies and diaries of authors more than I enjoy reading their works. Perhaps that's because real people's lives are often more interesting than the stuff they write about in their fiction.

1 comment:

Aquila ka Hecate said...

I picked up The Poincare XConjecture by Donal O'Shea.
Oretty good so far, if you,like Math.

Love,
T in J

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