happy chatter

Frank and I have been to Melbourne and back in the last 36 hours, to celebrate his mother's 80th birthday. It was a flying trip at a relaxed pace... which is to say we were away for just over 24 hours but didn't rush around too much. I'm still deciding if 'just over 24 hours' qualifies as my first escape from the island in 14 months. It doesn't seem long enough some how.

Near Frank's mum's place there is a 'Dirt Cheap Books' warehouse - every book is $4.99 unless otherwise marked. So many books, so much rubbish. Peter Costello's memoir was there for (yup, you guessed it) $4.99, a fact I noted with quite some glee. Cook books, kids books, novels, spells, colouring in... you name it, they had it.

I ended up with four books after culling several: Where underpants come from by Joe Bennett, Not Buying It by Judith Levine, Tilt by Nicholas Shrady and The end of food by Paul Roberts.

I started reading Where underpants come from last night, and I'm struggling to put it down. Hilarious, insightful, informative and downright fascinating, am I ever glad this one stayed in the purchasing pile. (Truth be told, if I'd been forced to choose only one book, this would have been it. I ordered it from the New Internationalist website a few months ago but they'd just sold all their stock. It was $25 or so dollars there, and here I got it for five bucks. What a score!)

The end of food was another New Internationalist selection on my wish list...

I'm not all about buying on the cheap, externalising the costs, blah, blah, blah, but it is nice to get a book for a bargain. And I thought I'd get a few last minute purchases in before 2011 (since I'm in discussions about committing to buying nothing new for the whole year...).

But is there an irony in buying a book called 'Not buying it'? Especially when I'm considering not buying lots of things? Hmmm.

Righto, I'm off to read another chapter or two.

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