…and buy a brand new book from a high street bookshop! Yes really! For the second time this year!

I rather blame Youngest Child as she had seen a book the previous weekend and decided it was no cheaper on Amazon, so she would buy it in town. Well, it wasn’t cheaper (no surprise there) but as I had been eyeing up the book below, we combined to get the “buy one, get one half price” offer and the prices ending up being the same!

I actually really enjoyed the browsing experience – new books are not a thing I often indulge in for a number of reasons. The main one, of course, is cost – if I bought all the books I wanted new I would probably be bankrupt by now. The second one, though, is that many of the books I want just aren’t available on the high street, so online clicky sources are the only option.

But with the failure of HMV and the disintegration of high streets, it was nice to feel the need to visit a real bookshop, pick up and look at covers and titles that attracted my attention, check out what editions were available of my favourites and so on. Plus I came home with a lovely, shiny new book with that freshly printed smell!

underground

The volume in question is Andrew Martin’s “Underground Overground” which is subtitled “A Passenger’s History of The Tube”. I really fancied some non-fiction and so far it’s a cracking read!

Alex in Leeds did a very good post here which discussed how the Waterstones retail model is so much better than HMV and I have to agree – the staff I encountered were helpful and knowledgeable, and the atmosphere in the shop was so much friendlier. So, although I don’t think I’ll abandon my tendency for second-hand or online shopping, I may well find myself popping in to Waterstones for ideas a bit more frequently!