Every day, every day I read the books

I am a rather huge bibliophile, with an ever-growing cascade of books filling the house. Periodically I clear some out only to have others fill it. At one point I imagined that moving to New Zealand, where books are generally a good bit more expensive than the US, might mean I bought less books. Silly me.

One of the great things about Auckland is the used book fairs that are held a handful of times a year, giant fundraisers for worthy causes like the Red Cross or Rotary. Needless to say I hit as many of these fairs as I can, where you can get a dozen books for under $20. There is a tactile pleasure in browsing row after row of used books (usually 5 million copies of "The Da Vinci Code" and "Future Shock" peppered throughout), looking for the rare gems you seek. I like the humble pleasures, and the smell of used paperbacks and the rustle of pages is satisfying to me. I am pickier now than I once was as Avril points out that we keep running out of bookshelves, and besides, quality over quantity and all that.

Today's haul:
• "Martin Amis, The War Against Cliche, Essays And Reviews 1971-2009" - I quite like Amis' tart nonfiction and this is a big hefty sampling of it.
• "Absolute Altitude: A Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Sky" by Martin Buckley – Sometimes you pick a book by its cover. This tale of flying oneself around the world seemed interesting.
• "Entertainment Weekly's The 100 Greatest Entertainers 1950-2000" – A pretty, glossy picture-kinda book taken from one of my favorite US magazines. Nothing deep, but nice to page through.
• "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" by Ian Fleming – I've been working my way through the original Bond books.
• "Careless Love, The Unmaking of Elvis Presley" by Peter Guralnick – The second half of his excellent Elvis biography. I read this years ago through the library – it's the "and fall" part of Elvis' life – and figured for $2 I wouldn't mind reading it again sometime.
• "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen – Can you believe for a bibliophile, I've never read this book?!