Book sources

A couple of posts recently have led to me having a look at the sources for my reading. Patti over at Pattinase had a post up about how many of the books people start reading they finish. Norm over at Crime Scraps had a poll on the source of the present book being read (as it happens the book I was reading at the time was purchased through Amazon marketplace). Generally, if I start a book and it fits my mood, I'll finish it. I think part of the reason for this is I'm a pretty discriminate chooser books, and as the graph below shows, I buy nearly all my books. I tend to do a little work before parting with my cash. I'm forever trying new authors, but I have a bit of a browse first and trust the opinions of reviewers my tastes coincide with.

Of the 219 books I've reviewed on The View from the Blue House since July 2009, I have bought 183. I've received 3 from authors direct and 6 from publishers for review. 3 have been loaned to me by friends. 23 were gifts, mostly from a single source and were part of someone's estate. Only one was loaned from the library. Of the 183 that I've bought, 97 were bought off the internet (mostly Amazon, Amazon marketplace, Book Depository and Abebooks), 70 from bookstores and 16 were from charity shops. Generally, books bought on the internet were ones that were difficult to source in Ireland and needed to be ordered in. The ones in bookshops were impulse buys, or I knew I'd be able to source them there. I'm surprised that the balance between bookstore and internet is not the other way around and I'll try and work on that. I know this kind of spending pattern isn't for everyone, but I tend to use my royalty money from my own books for purchasing and I like to know that the author is receiving something for my reading pleasure. I have no idea how much I've spent on books over the past couple of years; I daren't try and work it out.