A pile, a shelf or a library?

I have spent most of this past week researching, hearing about, coming across, or just finding a number of books that have piqued my interest. I mentioned the other day about hearing of a new author (to me anyway) and fiction novels she’d written set in Tudor times. Then I came across an article in my LinkedIn feed of self help books that apparently we’d want to be seen reading. Then there’s the book that completes a series I have that had just been published and Amazon delivered my preordained copy of.

I have plenty of book vouchers to use up otherwise I would have ordinarily downloaded these onto my tablet. So I decided to go to the bookshops in town to get shot of these vouchers. Seems like the shops aren’t so keen.

Having gone into one well known High Street bookstore that I had a specific voucher for, I had the author and titles of the books written down. I couldn’t find the two by Nicola Cornick that I’d heard about in a podcast, but surprisingly did find the self help book with the slightly rude title. When I went to pay for that book I asked if they had the others in at all and maybe I just couldn’t see them. The shop assistant said “no we don’t have those“. Then just took the voucher, rung up the one book and gave me my receipt and told me how much was left on the voucher.

I went to the next very well known High Street bookstore and looked on the shelves and couldn’t find the Cornick books there either. Again I went to the assistant and asked. This time I was told “no we don’t have those in but I could order then for you and they’d be here in a couple of days“. Yes please that would be great. Details exchanged and I await a message when they’ve arrived. Pay on collection.

Now, I’m sure the first bookstore could also have offered to order them in, but as they didn’t offer I took my custom elsewhere.

This does now mean that I have five books waiting to be read. And still a lot of money left on the vouchers. Just need enough down time to sit and read them.