Where do you buy books?

Or do you? As a child, growing up in a family with limited financial means, we didn’t buy many books. I did view the ones I owned as special, and I still have a few of them, battered after about forty years of ownership. For the most part, we read books that we checked out of the local library, or the school library. Even when I was in elementary school, my mom was thrilled when one of my teachers described me as “well read.” That still fits, I suppose, even if the source of my reading material has changed.

I still read quite a bit from libraries as I transitioned from a student to a teacher, but with the heavy burden of reading what was assigned by my college professors and what I was teaching to my students, my reading for pleasure was naturally curtailed. Then came two children, and wow, did that make a difference!

The years kept going by and when I was in my early forties, I suppose I had a bit of a mid-life crisis. Instead of buying a motorcycle— which I had given up at 33, when I learned I was pregnant— I began to read exactly what I wanted to read. Not what was on the best seller list, not what was being touted by my friends or family members, not what I could get at the library, but what I wanted to read. I began collecting obscure works that I’d missed. I now have all of Peter O’Donnell’s Modesty Blaise books. I read lots of science fiction, like David Weber, Elizabeth Moon, and Lois McMaster Bujold. Futuristic romance was just getting established, and I read all of them I could find. That search led me to eBooks, and book reviewing, and to a certain extent into writing my own books. I can’t remember who said it, but it is true that you write the books you want to read. The Gift Horse is a contemporary suspense story with dark psychological overtones, and Trinity on Tylos is a futuristic with romantic elements, and I love both of those genres, so if you like what I like, try them. Buy them— please!

Which brings me back to the original question. I seldom read library books anymore, but I buy quite bit from Amazon.com, and I buy eBooks from Fictionwise. I buy my rare books via Alibris, which is also on the internet. Locally, I like Books a Million, and I sometimes shop in Barnes & Noble, even though they refuse to carry my books. Borders will order my books, and I like the atmosphere in their stores, but they are perhaps the most expensive bookseller, so I seldom shop there, unless I need good service.