So of course I ended up not buying a modern first edition for my new god-son. I stayed traditional and he ended up with a RSV-CE New Testament and Psalms, which is good and clear but not too trendy. Doubtless he will never even look at it, but it's there if he wants to.

Another week of prolific book buying: I have been looking for ages for a 'How To...' book on doing a PhD and blow me if two don't come along at once! Browsing in Borders whilst the pregnant daughter availed herself of the toilet facilities, I came across a couple of OU publications, 'How to Write a Thesis' and 'The Unwritten Rules of PhD Research'. Only the former was priced - at £17.99!!! Recognising that buying both would be impossible, I took the latter (unpriced) to the check-out where I was informed that it -although slimmer - was £18.99. Laughing hollowly I told them that as far as I was concerned, they could...er...reshelve it.

Doctoral studies means that my book buying has been cranked up a notch. A rather expensive notch at that. Some books are just so useful or seminal that it is practically mandatory to possess one's own copy. Thus it was with Albert Rijksbaron's 'The Syntax and Semantics of the Verb in Classical Greek' and Constantine Campbell's hotly debated 'Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek', purchased from The Book Depository through Amazon, rather than directly from the former. Likewise my mother who wanted to buy me a 'useful' book for Christmas (i.e. one that I will actually use) found herself unable even to order the Loeb second volume of Epictetus from Borders, garnering nothing but a gormless smile from the unfortunate girl behind the information desk. God knows what antiquated data base they use. I was left to source the book online (again from the BD via Amazon - a bit cheaper than buying direct from BD strangely, even including the added on P&P). Whilst on the web I also ordered the two OU publications at £5 less each than the shop price. So - oh joy!- five books plopped through my letter box this week, one of which I am passing on to be wrapped and returned on Christmas Eve *rolls eyes*.

Oh, and by-the-by I bought a holiday reading book too: the Wordsworth Press's edition of Thomas Hardy's 'The Well-Beloved'. I thought that I had read all Hardy's works when expecting child #3, but this one seems to have escaped me. At £1.99, an absolute bargain. I look forward to waking early on the Christmas morns in order to read before the family awakes.

A Book as a Present. For Me.

For once I had a really good excuse to go shopping for books: a family Christening. Now, most Christening presents are useless tat that get shoved to the backs of cupboards to tarnish and eventually get thrown out. Really good presents are really expensive, things like a vintage port to lay down for the eventual 21st birthday (what 21 year-olds like port anyway?), or gold sovereigns...so I hit on the idea of a Really Nice Old Book. Will probably increase in value and prove saleable should the recipient be in need of a cash-injection in the future. Off to the local antiquarian book-shops, of which there are a few locally. My goodness, the Rackham-illustrated fairy tales are expensive: hundreds of pounds! As are most of the things that I had in mind. So what about a modern first edition? What I really wanted (perverse sense of humour surfacing here) was 'The Devil Rides Out' by Dennis Wheatley, and although there were Wheatley first editions, they looked a bit raunchy for an eighteen-month old. More suitable for his Dad, I think.

It was at this point that I got distracted, as I so often do, and I decided to go up the winding stairs to the theology section. Doing a doctorate gives me a sort of licence to peruse this section for Useful Books and, hey - what do you know - Nathan Han's 'A Parsing Guide to the Greek New Testament'. Wow - how fortuitous: a complete list of the verb forms as they occur. How useful is that for discourse prominence analysis?! And in good condition too - no dust-cover, but never mind, I'm running out of that adjustable film book-cover stuff anyway. So I bought it, chortling at my good fortune, and scuttled of to Starbucks where it is totally acceptable to sit awhile, reading like a Clever Person.

I have to confess a few previous sins to you at this point: I am addicted to online book buying. My favourite supplier is The Book Depository, because they don't add a delivery charge to most of their stuff, which tends to be as cheap, if not cheaper than Amazon. Though I do like Amazon too, because the sidebar options to buy second-hand from small dealers can yield some real bargains viz. my recent purchase 'A Greek New Testament Reader's Edition' in pristine condition from a guy at Oxford. And I like ABE Books to for the more obscure/out-of-print stuff (most recently 'Syriac Grammar: A New Approach'). Birthday money allowed me legitimately to buy 'A Dictionary of Paul and His Letters' (now satisfactorily covered with a film book-preserver) initially through the web, but when they postponed delivery I cancelled and bought it from the local St Paul's shop. The staff seemed so surprised that someone had actually bought something that they gave me a free St Paul calendar of saints' days. Another local second-hand bookshop had recently just got in a number of International Critical Commentaries (I am trying to collect a pre-owned copy for each of the books of the NT), including 2nd Corinthians which I was lacking and thereby hangs another shameful book-buying tale (for that, see another of my blogs 'parablepsis'). Suffice to say that I ended up buying 1st Corinthians too. Yesterday.

Being interested in language, I had been intending to buy the Penguin Classics annotated 'Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking-Glass', mostly for the brilliant word-play, and insights into Dodgson's mind and world. As I was going up the stairs in Borders, I picked up a copy of it to scan as I had my coffee (coffee is another addiction of mine, so there'll probably be many a mention of it in this blog unless I start another one dedicated to that too). I had taken the precaution of getting a mini bank statement before I started out, so I knew that I only had £7.55 to last me until Monday, having bought the parsing book - and I know that Penguin Classics tend to be expensive. Oh - and I had picked up a copy of Petronius' 'Satyricon' which I had been intending to read ever since I had read Apuleius' 'The Golden Ass' which I found surprisingly funny (tho' it did go off a bit at the end) - and that was £10.99! This last was just a reprint of a 1965 text, so the translation was a bit evasive to say the least, so I put that back. But for some strange reason the Lewis Carroll was only £5.99, well within budget so, reader, I bought it.....

More Books Than Sense: Introduction

That's it: my book buying is way out of control!
This is my confessional - mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa - wherein I shall note my purchases, my motivation for them, their actual usefulness and their current location.
An attempt to analyse my....er....problem...