urge to buy ...waning

I was rereading a book called orphans of chaos by John C. Wright.  I never bought the next two in the series, but thought "you know what?  I'm enjoying this.  I might buy the next one.  I'll buy it as an ebook".  Off I go to look at the sony shops.  They only have physical versions.  I'm trying for an ebook so I go wider.  Nothing on Smashwords, google only has hard copies.  Then I find a US site that sells ebooks in epub (though I have a kindle too, so it doesn't matter that much) version.  Its there!  I go through the process of signing onto the site.  The author has said no DRM, so thats always good.  But I can't buy it because its only allowed to be sold to US people.  ><  Apparently author rules (or perhaps authors publishers rules).  So I go to the kindle store...this edition is not available for Australian buyers.

Why? 

It can't be a price import thing.  I would have bought it locally using the Aus Sony shop by preference...but they didn't have it.  They have a physical copy for not much more than they charge for ebooks, so its not that they can make a bunch more from the physical copy.  Since they HAVE a physical copy, its not that the book can't be bought here.  I can't figure this one out.

Now I could buy the physical version.  But I just don't feel like it at the moment.  If there hadn't been an ebook anywhere I probably would have and thought myself lucky it was still in print, but I feel like I'm being offered a digestive biscuit, while everyone else is offered a chocolate biscuit.  I find my appetite fading under those conditions.

spending money too fast

I've had about four things that were serious sums of money (for me) in the last couple of weeks, all at once a couple were christmas related).  I'm trying to increase the money in the bank, but timing wise, putting any of them off would seriously inconvenience me, or stop me spending it at all as my window would close.  Sigh, I like to spread these things over one thing per pay fortnight, it looks better when the bank wants to see if I can live within my means when I get that house loan. This now means I have to act like a pauper for the next six weeks to get back on track.  No...More..Spending. 

rereading

With a few ereading exceptions (written by people I know), I've been rereading some of my old books.  They are really degrading fast.  I see the day when I'll have to replace them with digital versions.  Some even have odd stains that I assume were made by food/drink that I thought I'd cleaned off.

I won't talk about them all, just a couple that I made some new conclusions about.

There are two novels by Lyndon Hardy in my collection:

Master of the Five Magics and Secret of the sixth Magic.

I always get excited when I'm about to read these and then struggle with the characters, none of whom I like.  Every time I wonder why I remember the books with such fondness.  This time it hit me.  Its the world building.  The ideas in the book are so novel to me and so well described, that my logical mind spends all of the time I'm not liking the characters figuring out the universal rules.  I always end up with my mind just a little stretched.  Having made that realisation, I stopped trying to empathise with the protagonists, ignored their opinions as dumb, and just wallowed in the world building.


Speaking of picking up some ereader versions, I'm thinking theres a few prolific authors I'd like to get the "complete works of" digitally. - one day when I'm on holidays - I need to be organised about these things.  I must have lists.  I must tick them off.  I may also be finally ordering some sony ereader stuff through the ereader store - I'm not sure when it became available, but the link is there now when I sync my reader on my computer

LOTRO horse

One of my alts won a PAX Prime steed on LOTRO.  I've doen this before with another alt too.  Its never my main that wins the rare horses..but I'm not complaining.  I just need to level these guys up now.