I try to limit my book-buying and music-buying so that I can read and listen to everything I purchase, plus don’t become such a packrat that my house is crawling with piles of books and cds. I have been fairly consistent buying cds over the past few years:

Year / Total
2001 / 21
2002 / 23
2003 / 20
2005 / 21
2006 / 23
2007 / 23
2008 / 22

Book-buying, however, has been a bigger problem. I’ve been averaging buying 26 new books each year, which might not seem like much, but my collection of unread books is well over 100!

This year I have bought 24 books so far, and have read 28, so that is not bad. However, Christmas looms three weeks away and my Christmas list is filled with both books and cds! Plus I received an offer in the mail for a $20.00 discount if I purchase $40.00 worth of books from Dover Publishing, one of my favorite publishers which specializes in out-of-print books from the 19th and early 20th century. There are at least a half-dozen books in their catalog which I would love to buy:

Ivanhoe / Sir Walter Scott
Captain Blood / Rafael Sabatini
The Moonstone / Wilkie Collins
The White Company / Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Scarlet Pimpernel / Baroness Orczy
Moby-Dick / Herman Melville
Last and First Men / Olaf Stapledon

And their prices are so cheap I could get all those books for slightly over $40.00!

What is a rabid book-lover to do??? ☺