Saturday Steals Vol 13.

*Due to an extremely busy week, and my extreme tiredness, I'm replaying this round of Saturday Steals again! All shall be explained next week, I promise! Until then, have a fantastic weekend! xxx*

I have a bit of a hobby. Its not one of those formal hobbies that requires evening and weekend work, or hours slaving away to achieve a particular task. No, i’m a little too disorganised for such an arduous hobby. Sometimes months if not years can pass before I turn to this hobby once again, but this has no effect on how sweet the winnings are when I do find a particular item.

If you hadn’t already guessed, I collect old books.


This might not come as much of a surprise.

Now when I say old books, I don’t mean the guilt edged (although a little shiny glint never goes amiss), you can’t touch this its so old, put it in a glass case variety of old books. Mostly these are too expensive and I have no money, what with that whole student thing and whatnot. So I collect the books that slip through other peoples notice. The ones which end up on the back shelves of charity shops. The ones which my parents so generously gave to me to start this collection. The ones which nobody else wants.


A couple of weeks ago I hit gold in this department, and it was a find which most defiantly counts as a steal!

James and I were taking a walk in the small town of Woodbridge near us, in order to buy a new kitchen knife. (Yes we went to a different town to buy a knife, its a long story, don’t ask!) Where outside a charity shop was a table covered in books, now I can never resist a second hand book table so was soon drawn towards it like a moth to a flame. This was what you might call the bargain corner of a charity shop. They weren’t even asking a fixed price on any of the books, just a small donation of above 20p per book. This is like heaven, if you are me!

So between us we manage to pick up a travel guide, a Ben Elton novel, a crime book which I have since read, and was so bad I gave up on and won’t even dignify you dear reader with the title, and this....


my favourite of them all.

It is as 1925 copy of George Elliot’s novel Romola. In the inside cover it has an inscription dated 1929 which reads, 'With love and best wishes for a very Happy Easter from .... Simon and Vera 31 May 1929'. There was only one word which I couldn't really make out.



I love this. I actually love this. I love being able to hold a book in my hands and imagine all the people who may have held it before me. Now yes, the binding is going a little bit, but to me that just adds to its charm. I’m a firm believer that books are there to be read, this books binding just demonstrates that it has been used for its original purpose many times, and that can only be a good thing.



For a find so good, James and I gave them all the change which we had on us, which amounted to a little over £2.50. I cannot believe that I paid so little for this treasure, or at least its a treasure to me!

I hope everyone has a happy and relaxing weekend.

This post is part of Saturday Steals over at Archive of Our Lives, head on over there to find some more amazing bargains.

(And yes, I did go a little crazy with the antique effect on iphoto!)