Ten Little Chances to be Free (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tenlittlebullets) wrote2010-05-03 10:52 pm
tenlittlebullets) wrote2010-05-03 10:52 pm
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My excuse is that I need brain candy this summer
17 days, 11 cities, 6 night trains, 5 youth hostels, 1 hangover, and god knows how many fragmented multilingual converstions later, I am back in Paris!
And procrastinating merrily on the giant pile of work I have to do.
Because obviously when you have a midterm and a paper due the next day, two semester projects due within a week or so, at least one exam you are woefully unprepared for, and a big ol' heap of plans and activities to manage, the thing to do is buy books.
See, I wandered onto Amazon intending ONLY to buy "Paris au temps de Balzac," which I have been coveting for seven or eight months now. But I have a gift card to burn on the American Amazon, and free shipping to take advantave of on the French Amazon. So I ended up with Paris au temps de Balzac, Rimbaud's complete works, Verlaine's gay porn, Melmoth the Wanderer, a collection of Le Fanu stories, Polidori's The Vampyre, Poppy Z Brite's Lost Souls, the first Comte de Saint-Germain novel, the first three Hornblower books, Perdido Street Station, The Difference Engine, The Anubis Gates, and The Stress of Her Regard.
....not that I had a sudden craving for steampunk or trashy gothic novels or anything!
Most of these are getting shipped to my house in the US, so I don't have to worry about cramming them into my suitcase come June. XD Every time I go on one of these book-buying binges I think of my grandfather; he upbraids me whenever I express guilt over buying waaaaay more books than I can read in the foreseeable future, and sternly tells me I'm starting a library and this is a GOOD thing.
EDIT: Okay, the gift card is officially used up, and the shipments making their way to my door in America now also include box sets of the Dark is Rising sequence and Earthsea, The Left Hand of Darkness, the Once and Future King, Maurice, a collection of gothic tales by Elizabeth Gaskell, and--god help me--an ink-and-paper copy of the Pearl. Because Victorian smut is entertaining.
Yes, I do pretty much plan to spend this summer reading in a hammock, why do you ask?
And procrastinating merrily on the giant pile of work I have to do.
Because obviously when you have a midterm and a paper due the next day, two semester projects due within a week or so, at least one exam you are woefully unprepared for, and a big ol' heap of plans and activities to manage, the thing to do is buy books.
See, I wandered onto Amazon intending ONLY to buy "Paris au temps de Balzac," which I have been coveting for seven or eight months now. But I have a gift card to burn on the American Amazon, and free shipping to take advantave of on the French Amazon. So I ended up with Paris au temps de Balzac, Rimbaud's complete works, Verlaine's gay porn, Melmoth the Wanderer, a collection of Le Fanu stories, Polidori's The Vampyre, Poppy Z Brite's Lost Souls, the first Comte de Saint-Germain novel, the first three Hornblower books, Perdido Street Station, The Difference Engine, The Anubis Gates, and The Stress of Her Regard.
....not that I had a sudden craving for steampunk or trashy gothic novels or anything!
Most of these are getting shipped to my house in the US, so I don't have to worry about cramming them into my suitcase come June. XD Every time I go on one of these book-buying binges I think of my grandfather; he upbraids me whenever I express guilt over buying waaaaay more books than I can read in the foreseeable future, and sternly tells me I'm starting a library and this is a GOOD thing.
EDIT: Okay, the gift card is officially used up, and the shipments making their way to my door in America now also include box sets of the Dark is Rising sequence and Earthsea, The Left Hand of Darkness, the Once and Future King, Maurice, a collection of gothic tales by Elizabeth Gaskell, and--god help me--an ink-and-paper copy of the Pearl. Because Victorian smut is entertaining.
Yes, I do pretty much plan to spend this summer reading in a hammock, why do you ask?
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Also, "Paris au temps de Balzac" is a $40 coffee-table book, and it wasn't on the gift card. But I have been lusting after it for months and periodically going back to the Carnavalet bookshop to stroke it and page through it and verify that it's just as shiny as I remember, therefore it is a justifiable splurge.
So I have been prodigal today, but $40 book + running $30 over the gift card = I just bought thirty shiny, shiny books for the price of a nice theatre ticket.
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If you keep going back for it, it is a justifiable purchase, especially if it's something you can only get in France.
I just bought thirty shiny, shiny books for the price of a nice theatre ticket.
Hee. I just spent a boatload of money for someone's birthday in NYC this weekend. I had fun, but I admit the thought "I coulda bought 5 books for that much" passed through my mind.
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Only trouble is my frame of reference is stuck at the time I bought the most books, i.e. when I was a kid and mass market paperbacks were $5.
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WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT TO YOURSELF. D:
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The problem really starts when your problem is no longer how to pay for all the books, but how to find space in your house for all the books.
That's when the whole "I'm buying way too many books that I can never read in the foreseeable future" thing really starts becoming problematic.
Especially if you happen to be married to someone who refuses on principal to sell/donate/otherwise remove from the house any book, regardless of how much he disliked it.