Charity Shop Watch: April 2009

I'd not been on my charity shop run for quite some time, but came back with quite a haul today. I did my bit for heart disease, spending £10 on four books in the British Heart Foundation Shop. The most expensive of the charity shops on my run, they seem to have upped their prices since my last trip, with many books now on sale for £3 a go. But they do have a good selection and the four I bought could easily have been doubled.

I bought:

The Book of Chameleons by Jose Eduardo Agualusa
You Cannont Live as I have Lived and Not End up Like This - The Thoroughly DisgracefullLife and Times of Willie Donaldson by Terence Blacker
The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
The Girls by Lori Lansens

Once more proving that last year's best seller is this year's charity fodder, there were four copies of No Time for Goodbyes in the BHF shop and another one in the YMCA shop. How long before multiple copies of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher start to appear there?

Charity Shop Watch Part 2

I returned to the shop that had the three copies of "The Five People You Meet in Heaven". No copies of it remained but instead there were three copies of "The House at Riverton" by Kate Morton. Very odd.

Also is it weird of me to feel slightly offended when I see copies of books I love in charity shops? Its not as if I'm the author, but I still feel a bit put out that someone wants rid of something that is a favourite of mine.

For the second week running I didn't buy anything. I was tempted by a copy of "The Artist in the Floating World" by Kazuo Ishiguro, but I'm on a temporary book buying ban, having bought three books last week. I will lift the ban once these are read.

Charity Shop Watch

On my regular Sunday jaunt to what I refer to as the Charity Shop Mile (which isn't anywhere near a mile long, but does have 5 charity shops), I spotted that one shop had three copies of the same book. Clearly a book that was briefly a "must read" book, but is over-rated.

It wasn't the Da Vinci Code, although that would fit my analysis and there is usually a copy of this in the Charity Shop Mile.

The book was:

The Five People You Meet in Heavenby Mitch Albom

I've read it myself a few years ago, that it was only just ok.