I did a bad, bad thing.
I got myself an AbeBooks account.
Also known as...book heaven.
An online re-creation of old, musty bookshops.
A literary shut-in's dream.
...
I'm royally screwed.
I first discovered the site a good few years ago when i was obsessed with owning a first edition of the Mervyn Peake illustrated Alice's Adventures In Wonderland.
Those things cost a bomb as you can imagine, so i backed away from my laptop before i did something really, really stupid and didn't return.
Until a few years later i finally read the entire Gormenghast series.
And fell in love.
Yet again i became obsessed with the idea of owning a first edition of the Trilogy with Peake's illustrations.
Too rich for my beggarly blood, however.
So, off i scampered from the clutches of my degenerate laptop and my own weak will to save myself from another potentially ruinous monetary venture.
And i've been doing quite well ever since.
No more desperate searches in the middle of the night.
No more longingly staring at editions for sale.
I don't need first editions.
It'd be nice and one day i hope to have one but for now a relatively pristine copy will do me fine.
...
But then i had to go and read Neuromancer, didn't i?
And the sequel is impossible to find at a low price unless you buy second hand.
Which i did, through a pretty awesome seller called AwesomeBooks.
They started as a small collection of unwanted books in the basement of an ex-student's mother's basement in 2004 and have now grown to stock over 2 million titles.
Not bad for small beginnings.
But those small beginnings are going to be my ugly downfall.
They will be the reason i'll have to live in a 'house' constructed of the books i've bought instead of food.
...
Actually, that sounds pretty okay.
...
Help me?
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