On Changing The Shopping Of Books

Sadly, my regular visits to my local used bookstore chain are probably ending.  I have gotten myself into a quandary:  I go almost weekly, yet scarcely do I find anything that I really want to buy.

Really, it is my own fault.  My interests have become rather specialized over the years.  In some cases it was these trips to the bookstore that started me down this path - Isocrates, for example, or Procopius' History of Justin's Wars - but those were one-off purchases.  When I went back, I can never seen to find the additional works that I need to fill out the collection or series.

Along with this, there seem to be a lot of the same books there now.  The survival and agrarian shelves have grown mightily since I started going there, but let us be honest:  how many books on chickens do I really need?  (Not as many as are published, it seems.)  Some authors have virtually every book they ever published for sale (if you are a fan of R.A. Salvatore and his Drow stories from Forgotten Realms, you are set), while others (mostly the ones I grew up with in the 70's and 80's) only appear periodically at best.

What does this mean?  Basically, my options are to keep rolling the dice (unreliable at best) or simply admit that most of the books I want from now on in are going to have to come from online sources.

I am not a fan of paying the shipping,mind you.  $3.99 a pop makes even the cheapest book close to $5.00.  But I am also not a fan of continuing to waste my time idly wandering through aisles of books, never really finding the ones that I want.  It is inefficient - and I have better things to do with my time.

I will still wander in from time to time, of course - there is never something as exciting to me as a used book store.  But I will wander a lot less and find my surprise factor all the greater when something comes into view.