Book bonanza
There are few gifts more annoying to me than book tokens. To me, they always seem like money with strings attached: you can buy what you want, but the gift-giver is implying, in a not so subtle manner, what they think you should get, and restricting your choice to the goods sold in a certain type of shop. I tend to find this particularly frustrating because I almost always shop online, often buying from stores outside the UK, in which case book tokens aren’t even any use for buying books. I’m not a voracious reader - books, for me, tend to be what you occupy yourself with to send yourself to sleep at night, or to pass time on the train/bus or when seated on the porcelain throne. As such, most books last me for absolutely ages, with even one that I’m particularly gripped by generally keeping me going for at least a week (probably closer to a fortnight if it’s more than 300 pages). Still, after Christmas, I found myself with £20 of book money to spend, so today I headed into town to see if I could get rid of it.
As luck would have it, Borders had a “3 for 2” sale on, though, as usual, I could only find two books I was genuinely interested in. I picked up Casino Royale by Ian Fleming and The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (both due to the Baron’s recommendations, so he shall be held personally responsible in the event that I don’t like them), and, not seeing anything else in the sale worth grabbing, settled on Restless by William Boyd, a spy thriller whose synopsis at least sounds mildly engaging. With only 15 of the £20 spent, I also threw in a copy of The Odessa File by Frederick Forsythe (I’m currently half-way through his The Day of the Jackal and finding it to be a decidedly gripping read).
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