A Spring (-ish) Haul, Kind Of

As someone who typically purchases upwards of 4 or 5 books in one outing, let alone an entire season, it's a little weird for me to telling you about books I've purchased in a two-month period and not have them numerated above a total of ten.

However, even though I'm sure I will have more than enough opportunities to buy more books in the rest of April and May - and that those opportunities will definitely be taken advantage of! - I've decided to title this a "Spring Haul," because these purchases did, in fact, occur kind of close to the beginning of Spring. Sort of. Ish.

university bookstore sale

Hastily taken before work,
to inform Instagram of my success

In the last week of Winter Quarter, the University Bookstore had a huge sale, trying to move out some of their old inventory to make room for a new season of releases. That means that a lot of really awesome books were priced between $5 - $10... and I didn't even find out about it until I went in to purchase a blue book for a Final, right before a work shift.

(And, of course, in recapping this, I realize that I forgot to include TWO books in the above picture -drat!)

Crunched for time and overwhelmed with opportunities, I left with a copy of Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries, an Agatha Christie, and plans for making a reappearance the following day.

It's a good thing I did, too... if I hadn't gone back - and especially with my friend Taylor in tow - then I never would have found out that there was a huge treasure trove of also-bargain books, buried in the shelves beneath the more prominent displays! After weighing out cost-benefit relationships for the armfuls of books I was carrying around the store with me, I ended up leaving with four books to add to those I had purchased the day before.

Total cost: about $55 for six books, four of which are hardcover. 

Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries

Agatha Christie's Mrs. McGinty's Dead

Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Carmela Ciuraru's Nom de Plume: A Secret History of Pseudonyms

Cary Elwes' As You Wish: Inconcievable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride

Caitlin Doughty's Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, and Other Lessons from the Crematory

amazon bookstore, aka the reason I'm going to book-hell

So, as you might have heard, Amazon's grasping hands have been branching out from their quest for complete Internet retail domination, into actual brick-and-mortar stores. I have a lot of feelings about this, and obviously not a whole lot of them are positive. 

However, there's some good about it, too: they're running a pretty successful - if morally flawed - system of stocking their shelves, which means they have great selections, and they only sell them at the prices they stock them online. That means a hardcover which might be upwards of $25 in title price, could be sold at least $6 cheaper. 

After realizing I had kept my friend's copy of Lauren Groff's Fates and Furies almost a week longer than we had originally agreed upon, without me having finished it yet, I knew I needed to go pick up my own copy. A dinner with my Dad and sister in UVille made for the ideal chance to stop in... which is why I also left with two other books, as well. Darn it. 

Total cost: about $50 for three books, all hardcover.

Lauren Groff's Fates and Furies

Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney's The Nest 

Naomi Novik's Uprooted

amazon kindle

And, of course, what book haul would be complete without me purchasing something dumb for my Kindle, like, say, I don't know... a "hip" self-help guide to happiness! This is what happens when you give someone prone to fits of existential despair wifi and an Amazon account. 

Total cost: like $9 or something. 

Gabrielle Bernstein's Add More -Ing to Your Life: A Hip Guide to Happiness

So, have you made any new and exciting purchases lately? What kinds of genres do you typically shop for in the Spring? Let me know, in the comments below!