I've been on a book buying spree

This summer I've been managing to fit in a reasonable amount of work. I do some at home work for a company which is basically all about teaching computers to be more like people, and although the work available can be sporadic I've been lucky enough to be involved with a few projects recently that I can work on around the children. 

So I was feeling a bit flush this month and decided to treat myself to some book purchases!

I started by buying a couple of brand new books. I love Gone With The Wind, but my old second hand copy literally fell apart, in fact I used some of the pages towards a craft using recycled book pages. I love my shiny new copy and I'm looking forward to re-reading it. 

I also treated myself to The Breaking Point by Daphne du Maurier. We had a copy when I was growing up (under the title The Blue Lenses and Other Stories) and there was one story in particular, The Pool, which I remembered well. I really enjoyed reading these familiar stories over again.

I also bought two more nostalgic books. When I was growing up I loved the Blue Door Theatre books but we only had three from the series - The Swish of the Curtain, Golden Pavements and Blue Door Venture. These books made references to adventures that I knew were contained in the two books below, Maddy Alone and Maddy Again, but they were long out of print and I never managed to get hold of them. 

Well I picked up my copy of The Swish of the Curtain to read to Mia, the only one in the series that I still owned, and after a Google I discovered that they have been republished in gorgeous paperback editions! So I bought the two that I hadn't read and enjoyed them very much (and I suspect that I may end up buying the rest of the series as well so that I have a row of matching copies).

Then I took Mia to the opticians for new glasses and we popped into The Works opposite. While she was eyeing up the fidget toys I spotted this little book called Quiet in the sale section for just £1. I'm a sucker for a self help book and I couldn't resist! It's actually pretty good, it's  all about how the world today is such a noisy place and some of the ways that we can carve out a little bit of piece and quiet for ourselves. 

Finally I took Mia out for an afternoon of shopping in our local village, which has five charity shops. I've not been in a charity shop for such a long time as we've barely been into the shops lately, and we had a wonderful time! Between all the shops I picked up five books for myself at a total cost of just £6 (along with three of Jacqueline Wilson's for Mia). I was particularly pleased with The Binding because I was looking out for it having borrowed it from the library last year. 

I only tend to buy books that I've read and enjoyed, and know that I'll want to re-read. I get through books very quickly and I don't have the money to buy every book that I want to read. The only new book to me here is The Flight of the Falcon by Daphne du Maurier, but as I really like her books I'm hoping that it's a safe bet!

I'm saving A Christmas Carol for Christmas and I've just started Atonement, which is every bit as good as I remember. 

Luckily we recently decided that we can make the space for a new bookcase in the living room, so I'll have somewhere to put all these lovely new books!