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The Curse of the Biblioholic.

Dammit.

Seems everyday now there's at least one new book or one new author that I discover and am intrigued about. This is dangerous because I seem to have less spending money nowadays. (Must be that wedding.)

But I can't help it. I keep buying and buying anyway! It's become a daily habit of mine to browse my favourite litblogs, literary websites and LibraryThing, and it's always in those places I find something or someone new to read. I can't stop! If I stop browsing those sites... I'd feel all empty inside!

Last weekend, I bought three China Mieville books that I'd been meaning to read for some time now. LibraryThing's Suggester's fault. And from there, I've been intrigued by the Gormenghast trilogy that Mieville is influenced from. And now I want to get those too!

Dear oh dear. It's a never-ending cycle. The Curse of the Biblioholic.
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Comments

  1. Lanata13/6/07 9:22 am

    knowing you this obsession is definitely better than guys buying magazinews about sportscars or playboy bunnies, which is not sexy at all. Ugh. Keep obsessing!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ted Mahsun13/6/07 11:32 am

    But... but... I buy magazines of sportscars too! Playboy bunnies I get online... but shh! don't tell anyone! It's a secret!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous13/6/07 10:52 pm

    Ahahahahah. When it comes to litblogs, I usually only browse yours and Sharon's site, so I don't need to worry so much. It's when I walk into a physical bookshop that I get into trouble. Of course, the other day I read about acmabooks.com in the papers and then visited and now I want one of the books I saw there. Arrrgggh!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ted Mahsun14/6/07 9:57 am

    Hoho... I'm still safe in that Acma doesn't have an interesting enough interface for me to buy books in. *snobs*

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous14/6/07 11:29 am

    Yeah, I know. I realised when I went there that I'd visited the site before. But it's not very user-friendly, esp compared to Amazon, the godfather of online bookstores. So I'd never gone back again till that day.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Chet14/6/07 1:00 pm

    Who cares about interface when there's a 10% discount straight off? And other discounts, too, now and then. Like that time when they teamed up with Maybank2u and gave a 25% discount to all Maybank2u customers. On top of that, if your order totals RM200 and more, it's free shipping.

    The other day, I found an additional 18% discount, so that was a total 28% discount and since my order came up to just a little more than RM200/-, no need to pay shipping.

    You can always combine orders with friends to get the free shipping.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Ted Mahsun14/6/07 1:21 pm

    I'm sorry, Chet, but I'm a true believer of aesthetics. If it's not appealing to browse in, it's not appealing to buy from.

    On the other hand... I did see some books I *know* the major physical bookstores in Malaysia don't carry, so I think that's an advantage it has.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous14/6/07 2:59 pm

    It's not so much the aesthetics as far as I'm concerned, it's just the difficulty in browsing. First I have to choose the Malaysia store. Then I have to wait for the page to load and choose the bookstore. Then I wait for the page to load again and choose a category ("Language Arts & Disciplines"). Then I wait for the page to load and choose a sub-category ("Linguistics"). Then I wait for the page to load and am faced by a bunch of "New releases" at the top, and have to scroll quite far down to find my search results. That's not so bad; but the second page of search results STILL has the new releases stuck at the top and AGAIN I have to scroll down in order to see the search results. It's just not worth this much effort.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Chet14/6/07 8:41 pm

    I don't go in to browse. I use AcmaMall when I have specific titles to look for, and possibly order. Some of the books may be available in the bookshops but ordering from AcmaMall (and previously Amazon when their shipping charges were reasonable) saves me from being in a real bookstore and the temptation of looking at other books and ending up buying them.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Anonymous14/6/07 11:25 pm

    Oh, no wonder. I seldom look for specific titles... I buy books by browsing. Impulse shopper :P

    ReplyDelete

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