Whether it was shopping at Rita's [long closed] brick-and-mortar bookstore where even the science fiction was alphabetized! or going to Barnett Books [OMG I can't believe THEY are closing!] and running into Amee, unplanned, every time, there was nothing like the thrill of finding a long-desired treasure that no one wanted, for pennies! I'd leave Rita's and then go onto amazon.com and run all the ISBNs and see how much I saved. Best, I think, was $125?

I've been shopping online since I first used Webcrawler in the early 1990s. [First purchase may have been those Emergency! VHS episodes I watched at Meen's...] Rather than reselling books, mainly because I'm too lazy, I either keep them or, more recently, donate them to be resold for charity.

This article really hit some sensitive spots, not unlike fibromyalgia trigger points. I'll blog this but, for anyone who hasn't added my blog to her RSS feed... Bargain Hunting for Books, and Feeling Sheepish About It

By DAVID STREITFELD