15 Day Book Blogger Challenge: Day 6

The 15 Day Book Blogger Challenge was started by April @ Good Books and Good Wine on a whim as she wanted to do a blogging challenge related to books and was in a bit of a slump.

Day 6: Describe how you shop for books

Ha. Hahahahaha. HAHAHAHAHAHA. This is a funny one for me. I think the one word that would describe how I shop for books is compulsively. If you read my Day 1, my last confession was that at some point I went from reader to collector and that is certainly true.

Let me show you my books to accentuate my point.

My physical copies read-to-review pile:

Random books to-read including requested review copies:

Books I randomly bought on a whim two nights ago and arrived today:

And my bookshelf's current state:

There's actually a whole stack of books on the top shelf behind the mass-market paperback row.

Each shelf has about 3 layers of books - the initial layer at the back, a layer on top of that, and a layer at the front. The shelf second from the bottom is SO packed in you can't even see the initial layer in the back :P

So... I actually haven't read most of these books D:

The ones you see at the front are mostly ones I haven't read so I leave them at the front to remind myself to read them... and yet I still buy more books. (Don't even get me started on the number of eGalleys that are months old which I haven't gotten around to... I've banned myself from NG for the time being.)

I walk into a bookshop (95% of the time Kinokuniya Sydney) and I just have this urge to buy something. I love trolling through the YA section and looking for books I haven't heard of. If the cover and font is pretty, the title caught my eye and the blurb interests me, I'll jump onto GR on my phone and look up the rating. If the rating is >3.9 (or better yet >4) and friends on GR whose reviews I trust, have also given it a good rating, then that's about $18 gone from the bank account! I actually wrote a guest post on Cuddlebuggery Book Blog about my OCD book buying... READ MY RAMBLINGS HERE: The OCD of Picking a Book I also feel weird just buying 1 book... So I find something else to buy AHA.

If a book I love has a cover that gets redesigned and the sequels are all going to have this new cover, then I will buy book 1 etc. in the NEW cover so it matches (more on this later). I also buy physical copies if I liked the ARC. This is true in most cases. I hate when publishers have to redesign covers AND OMG WHEN THE BOOK IS A DIFFERENT SIZE THIS IRKS ME TO NO END (my TMI series is ruined because of this, but I don't love the series enough to re-buy the set LOL. BUT I WILL BE RE-BUYING ALL OF DIVERGENT IN THE AMERICAN HBS WHEN THEY COME OUT!!!).

You can imagine savings is not a term that exists in my vocabulary.

Sometimes, if I'm not TOO desperate for a book, I'll wait it out and buy it from The Book Depository when I go on fortnightly/monthly online book buying binges. This'll save me HEAPS as a book on The Book Depository that costs $9~$12 costs $16~$21 in Kino.

Then there's the time when I'm EXTREMELY desperate for a book that's not published in Australia (yet) and ordering through my bookstore's supplier will take like a month... I will hop onto TBD straight away and buy the book - 2 week wait versus 4 and it's cheaper so win-win. I should really do this more often and save money, however sometimes I get so excited when I see a book in-store and I just want it instantly.

As you can tell, I have like NO patience, especially when it comes to a book I'm eagerly anticipating.

Exhibit A: Impatience

This Girl (Slammed #3) by Colleen Hoover came out ONLY on the iBooks store, and it cost like $10 (that's an ouch for me in terms of eBooks). I was sitting in a lecture. I was on my iPad when I saw it on Twitter. It crossed my mind This Girl would probably be put onto NG. I bought it anyway and finished it that night. It was uploaded onto NetGalley 3 days later and I would have been approved (it was the first few hundred and I'm a REALLY fast clicker). My only consolation was that I'd already finished it before it was on NG.

Exhibit B: Series Obsession

The Gathering Dark (Shadow and Bone book 1 in The Grisha Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo) had its cover redesigned and retitled for UK/Aussie release. For Siege and Storm, the cover and style followed that of the original US Shadow and Bone with only a few minor tweaks (the cover is blue instead of gray). I own The Gathering Dark and could have just bought the Aussie cover. I went onto TBD and bought Shadow and Bone and Siege and Storm in the hardbacks so they match. I now have The Gathering Dark, the ARC of Siege and Storm (WITH The Gathering Dark), Shadow and Bone in hardback and Siege and Storm in hardback. Every time I pass Siege and Storm in bookstores I'm tempted to buy that too just so I have all the covers.

Exhibit C: Cover OCD

When I bought Veronica Rossi's Through the Ever Night with the redesigned UK/Aus covers, I also bought the redesigned Under the Never Sky. I already own Under the Never Sky... So I gave this to my friend instead :D

Exhibit D: Desperate for a Book

I'd been waiting for Anna Banks' Of Triton for AGES, and I'd requested it for review from the publisher. There was a little change up with the publisher so I assumed they'd forgotten about me. A friend told me she'd seen Of Triton in Big W (but I don't live near one) so I was at Kino the next day looking for it. I was devastated when they didn't have it... So I ventured into Dymocks and I literally RAN to the book when I saw they had it! I buy it and read it in 1 night. This is Saturday. Do you know what shows up on my doorstep from a certain publisher on Monday morning? You guessed it, a review copy of Of Triton *face palms*

I obviously have problems. Do you? I mean, how do you buy books?