As a matter of fact I got 3 new books today. Ordered them last week from a bargain books catalog. Got 'House of Earth' by Woody Guthrie. I have heard and read a lot about him over the years and expect this to be a good read. Also got 'Once Upon A Flock' by Lauren Scheuer. It is the story of her life with a her quirky flock of chickens. Promises to be a fun read. Also got a new crossword puzzle book.

For Christmas my daughter got me 'The Outermost House' by Henry Beston. This book first published in 1928 is about the author's year of life on the beach of Cape Cod. I am about halfway through it. The author paints beautiful pictures of nature with words alone.

I get new books often because I volunteer in our library's used bookstore. It's hard to go home without a new book. My most recent purchase is the play Inherit the Wind. ($1)

I'm allergic to library books. Sigh. They make my nose run and my eyes water. So I always have a new book. Right now I have quite a backlog, though it doesn't stop me. I've been reading a lot of light mysteries recently. Escapist stuff. Right now it's The Job by Evanovich and Goldberg. I also have a couple of new Kindle books to read. I can't remember the name of the newest. It's a business book with a bland title. Just now I was considering reading Pitch Perfect. It's cheaper hardbound than Kindle (remaindered), but I don't know if it's worth the houseroom, and it sounds like something I'd rather read on my phone. Unlike the movie, it's not fiction. It's about the real collegiate a cappella groups.

We buy books all the time. It's a hobby with us. We both have Kindles, so we buy e-books as well as 'real' books.

For ebooks I often use Bookbub, which is great for exploring discounted new authors I wouldn't otherwise find. My categories are romance, history, sci-fi/fantasy, and mystery. Most are throwaways (deletions, IOW) but I've found almost a dozen new authors I'll be following in the future.

DH just uses Amazon for his ebooks. He's got my password so I'm trusting him not go crazy with my acct [smile].

Barnes & Noble offered us a good deal on a Barclays Bank card. The points are redeemed automatically for B&N gift cards, plus we get an automatic 10% off the price, even on sale books. If we use the B&N credit card we get another 10% credit, applied to the monthly bill.

But since we use that card for 90% of our purchases, we just accumulate a lot of gift cards. Periodically we hit the (last few) remaining stores and walk out with a bag or two crammed full of books for which we paid nothing. Last week we bought over $100 of books with gift cards and still had two left over, with another five coming to us in the next month, due to some big remodeling expenditures.

Works out great; we pay the card off every month and don't have to pay interest, either.

Of course, once B&N goes under (sad, but inevitable), we'll have to decide what kind of charge card to use next: points or cash? But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

So, it occurred to me that I could look up my forgotten book on Amazon. No wonder I forgot it! It's not business, per se. It's economics and policy. Dismal. :D

BTW, I highly recommend The Power of Positive Deviance. It's not really about business, though a good book for business thinkers. It's about ground up problem solving methods, using the outliers who are having success where there's a difficult problem confronting most for identification of strategies that work locally, and how to spread solutions taken from the community within the community to effect real change.