Addiction

My bookshelves are positively groaning with the addition of my Christmas gifts (and a few other purchases of items not received). I recently read a blog post that talked about 'how to unclutter your book case'. She said to decide first how many books you would like to own. She came up with 60; I thought somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000...which doesn't sound very helpful except that I wouldn't necessarily own all the books I currently have. And of course I've not that much space for bookshelves, so I'm not really in any danger.



Anyhow when I noticed that the Marsden Boy Scouts were having a book sale of course I dropped in for a look as I was passing. I headed straight for the craft section, then the biographies and other non-fiction and then only lightly perused the novels for Veronica Roth's trilogy. No such luck.

But I did find a few other books of interest: The Viceroy's Daughters I have read before and know I will enjoy it again. It is largely set in the inter-war period and is about the three daughters of George Curzon.  It also has a lot to say about the Mitfords (one of whom who married Oswald Mosley, the ex-husband of the eldest Curzon daughter) and about Duke and Duchess of Windsor (AKA Edward VIII who abdicated to marry Mrs. Simpson).

The foodie book is rather silly and full of ideas I'm not likely to take up both for the health of my body and of my pocketbook, but I shall no doubt learn a term or two.

The Historian was selected mainly because of its title and the nice thickness, but it turned out to be about vampires, something I'd not realised. Fortunately it was nothing like Twilight, read more like a mystery and gave some wonderful descriptions of old cities in Eastern Europe, where we are headed this summer. 

I thought How to Shop and Why We Buy sounded intriguingly yin and yang. The former turns out to be a list of recommended outlets and boutiques across Britain whilst the latter seems to be an insight into how social psychologists study the habits of shoppers and make recommendations to stores. I'd hoped it would be more along the lines of 'how not to buy'; then again, I know quite a bit about that already.






Finally, the book about economics may well prove to be over my head, but I have enjoyed Freakonomics and The Undercover Economist, so we'll see.

I think six books for £4.50 to a good cause was a brilliant deal, don't you?