My kind of charity shopping

Back in the long long ago when working in a bookshop was just a pipe dream ( and I hadn't ruined said dream by actually working in a bookshop yet) , I used to read everything I could. I took whatever the library could give me, anything a charity shop would sell me and a whole lot of whatever my mum and sister had just finished reading. Then I got a job in a bookshop that allowed me to read anything I liked and I refined my reading tastes. I became picky but I was able to read the new releases the day they arrived and it was great and then I lived happily ever after. Oh no wait, wrong story, I loved being in book nirvana but the job itself bored me and I was miserable in it so I got out. Now I work mad hours in a job I love but no longer have an endless supply of books.

 Luckily for me my sister still reads like there's prize being given for it and was happy to weigh me down with books on my last visit home. Once I dug my way out of said mountain of books I noticed a common theme. A whole lot my donated books were crime fiction. When I started working in a bookshop I gradually edged away from crime fiction and found myself reading young adult books, literary fiction, biography and even popular psychology but it was very rare that a crime book made it home with me. I started to think that perhaps I had outgrown the genre and it didn't seem to matter too much with the constant inflow of new books to choose from. I could ignore entire sections of the shop and still read for months without pausing. 

 Anyway I found myself with a whole pile of books to read, even if they were mostly crime fiction so I started to comb my way through the stack to see which was most appealing. The strangest thing happened about two books in. I was hooked. I was getting through a book every two days and I noticed the stack was starting to dwindle so I panicked. Now a brand new book costs €15 upwards which is robbery when you think about how fast I read so I went back to my roots and set aside a day off to do a tour of Waterford's charity shops.  
I was hoping to make it home with a book or two and it seems I lucked out.
There's no shortage of charity shops in the city so I started at the one closest to me and I worked my way through town. I had no luck in the first two shops and I thought maybe I would head home empty handed but then I got into Oxfam who had 4 full shelves of books and seven of them came home with me. I wasn't exactly being fussy. If it looked readable and I hadn't read it before then I was willing to give it a shot and €1 and €2 a book, it would be silly not to. I probably should have left it there but I got excited because I love having loads of books to read so I checked out two other charity shops. I only stopped then because I was running out of hands. That seems as good a reason as any to stop. I'm almost finished the book I started yesterday and I have another 12 of the same ilk as soon as I am done so I am as happy as a well read clam.

 I have a feeling that from now on whenever I go to a new city that I won't just search out their health food stores but their charity shops as well. I might need to get more bookshelves if this continues but for now I am happy with so many books to read that I could build a fort out of them if I so wished and I just might do that yet. 

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