Everybody lies

posted on Wednesday, February, 25th, 2009 in reading matter

A couple of days ago a friend of mine asked me if I had ever bought one of those boxes full of books on ebay, because she wanted to know if it might be worth a try (not that she is in any danger of running out of stuff to read, mind you). I couldn’t help her, because I have never done that, since I don’t read books in german anymore. English books, on the other hand, don’t come in boxes on ebay Germany. At least, that is, they didn’t used to when I looked last. About 2 years ago or so.

But the idea appealed to me anyway, so I decided to have a look to see if anything had changed in the last 2 years. I found that english books are still mostly offered separately, but there are a lot more of them listed now than there used to be. Funnily, at the same time there seem to be even fewer buyers interested in english books (or the german ones, for that matter). So most of the books listed there didn’t have even one bid, even the ones that ended soon. With a starting price of 1,- Euro and shipping costs between 1,50 and 2,- Euros, things looked very interesting indeed, so I went through the whole listing, not once but twice within 4 days, and bid exactly 1,- Euro for any book that caught my eye.

Here’s the list of the ones that I won:

Kate Mosse – Labyrinth

Helen Forrester – A cuppa tea and an asprin

Alice Steinbach – Without Reservations

Julian Barnes – Love, etc.

Julian Barnes – England, England

Daniel Mason – The Piano Turner

Jeremy Clarkson – The World According to Clarkson

Kevin Brockmeier – A brief history of the dead

Scott Simon – Pretty Birds

Charles Stross – The Atrocity Archives

Brooks Hansen – The Chess Garden

Tony Parsons – Man and Boy

Stephen King – Nightmares & Dreamscapes

Yann Martel – Self

Deborah Ladbury – The Dinosaur Hunters

Constance Briscoe – Ugly

Patrick O’Brien – Master & Commander

Amitav Ghosh – The Glass Palace

Anita Diamant – The Last Days of Dogtown

Jeff Carlson – Plague Year

20 books for a total of about 50 Euros. That’s what I call a bargain. Looks like this could become a dangerous habit for me.

I’m actually pretty proud of myself that 4 of them were on my wishlist (well, one of my wishlists, since I have several). So, even though most of them were chosen just because the sounded or looked vaguely interesting, 4 of them are actually ones I have wanted to read for a while. Funnily, I only noticed that after I had bought them.

So far only 4 of them have arrived yet, but I expect the other ones in the next couple of days. Which means I have to make room on my TBR shelf, at least temporarily. I doubt that many of those books will remain in my keeper collection after I have read them.

Luckily there is a neat way to dispose of them (besides the obvious Bookmooch and Bookcrossing routes): last week I went to my local library again after almost a year and I was happy to notice that they have extended their collection of english language books quite a bit in the recent months. They even moved the whole thing to a much larger shelf section. So all the books I don’t intend to keep and that are not already registered on Bookcrossing will be donated to my library. And I really have to crank up my reading pace a bit, because with only 14 books finished this year I am way behind my usual schedule.