Secondhand books! One of the greatest pleasures of life. I ordered 14 books about Thomas Hardy. Such was the enthusiasm with which I pressed "buy" that I later found out I had ordered the same book in different editions in three cases. Never mind, three of the duplicates cost the enormous sum of £0.01 each. I can scarcely believe that anyone finds it worthwhile to trade in books that they can only sell for one penny. I suppose that they make a small profit on the post and package costs which are £2.80 per book.
The most expensive book in the collection was only £7.49. Two are individually numbered copies of a book published in a limited edition of two thousand. That feels rather special, even if they are both ex-library books, with the old date-stamps still intact. The older of the two has date stamps going back to 1938. That is almost antique! They are from university libraries. One of these cost £3.99 and the other £2.49.
Another book cost £0.87. How does that work? How did someone arrive at that figure for an out-of-print copy of TH's Notebooks?
I am not complaining. It has been like Christmas here for the last two weeks - exciting parcels arriving by almost every post, and an absolute feast of interesting reading.
Old books in small bookshops cast a delicious spell don't they?
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