Books, books and more books!

One thing I've noticed since being out on site, and remembering what it was like on site ages ago, is the ability to read a heap of books because of the time after work I have. On the RDO as well, if you don't have a bike, boat or fishing gear.

Combine this with a really good 2nd hand book store and you have a wealth of reading to be had!

There is a fantastic book store in Darwin's Smith St Mall that is a book exchange (in fact, that may even be the name of it...) where I have spent many hours perusing the book shelves for titles that take my fancy. At half price for near new books, why the hell not? They only reason I see now to buy new books is if I cannot locate them in a second hand place.

Every 6 months or so I go back to the bookstore and stock up on books again. Last time I bought 12 books, a lot of them were really quite new too and it worked out to be $10 a book. Some might say that is expensive but when the same book before was bought for $24 or $30, even $19, this is a considerable saving. And I LOVE reading!

So, why are second hand books great for me? Aside from the prices of books?

Because I end up coming across numerous gems of books that I wouldn't ordinarily buy because of cost and the risk of buying a book that was crap.

So by chance at least you can buy books that are cheapish that sound good and if they aren't quite up to what you thought it isn't such a bad thing.

So I thought I would rattle off a couple of books that I have come across:

1. Autumn Bridge
A Japanese novel, albeit written by a Japanese American, about the history of the Ochumichi clan, and it passes through numerous times and spaces. It was a head case of a book, but the intertwining stories were great. The blurb unfortunately only centred on one area and so I was disappointed when I didn't get to read about that one much, since that was the reason I bought it, but in hindsight the book was really quite good and gave a very interesting look into the Japanese culture.

2. In The Company Of Heroes
The real story of the pilot shot down in Somalia during America's occupation of Mogadishu in 1993. It was thoroughly interesting, even though I initially bought it for Dale. By chance, I also bought at the same time the actual book of Black Hawk Down, although I didn't know the link until after I got home. I thought I was just buying a couple of war books for him!

3. Numerous Paulina Simmons books
For some reason, this author finds a lot of her books in the Book Exchange. Yet her books are quite good. Oh well, that just means more for me! :)

4. Candy
I didn't realise there was a book of Candy that the movie was based on. It was a very interesting take on the heroin scenes in Melbourne and Sydney, although I had read a real-life memoir of a woman who was a street prostitute and heroin user who graduated to the better brothels in Melbourne and worked her way to the top, to finally be able to get off the smack. It was called In My Skin, by Kate Holden.

This is only a very small handfall of books, and since I haven't finished them all, I am clearly not going to be able to rattle them all off here! But they are a fantastic option for students and for the deep-pocketed people.