new obsessions.

 As I mentioned recently, I found an old Barnes & Nobles gift card for $50 that the parents from my last student-teaching placement got me as a parting gift. I had put it away in a drawer and forgotten about it until just a few weeks ago when I was trying to help Nick find his W2 forms. I literally found the card and was on the Barnes & Nobles website moments later, digging into my memory for the myriad of books I have been wanting to read forever. I wanted to get the most bang for my buck so I based my decisions on books that were $3 or less in their used-book forms. Christmas come early for this bookworm!

Two exceptions to the $3 rule:

Shantaram, though used, was a little pricier than the others but I have wanting to read this book forever. I still remember when my mom read it on one of our annual summer beach trips and couldn't stop talking about it. Since then, my stepdad has read it, various family members have read it, and close friends have read it - all insisting that it is a must-read and all encouraging the itch to read it myself. A few years ago, I read the very first line and that line alone confirmed that I absolutely did need to read the book. Talk about a successful opening line. My stepdad lost the copy that was being passed around (he left it in an airport!) but now I have my own copy to cherish and to keep. And the price was still a steal - $9 for a brick of a book that falls just shy of 1,000 pages.

And the only non-used book I bought: The Snow Child. A family friend mentioned this book on her blog A Tad Bookish and when I heard the title come up a few more times elsewhere, I became more and more intrigued. When picking books to purchase, I read the synopsis for this one more time and decided to take the plunge.

The rest of the books - I'm not even sure where I've heard of them all. Some were recommended by book-loving friends, some were mentioned on best-seller lists, and some were just written by names I knew I loved.

There are a million other books I'm dying to get my hands on (I started attempting to keep track of them on one of my Pinterest boards) but I still have plenty of other books on my bookshelf that I need to tackle on top of these newbies.

This is a challenge that does not daunt me.  :)