Wednesday, November 22, 2017

To buy or not to buy: Connie Willis's A Lot Like Christmas

I was very happy to see that a new book by Connie Willis was coming out, just in time for the holidays. But then I found that A Lot Like Christmas is a reprint of a book I already own, Miracle and Other Christmas Stories, with several new stories added. (Miracle seems to still be in print.) One of the "new" stories is "All About Emily." I bought that one a few years ago in a special hardback edition, which I thought was a bit overpriced.

I was looking at a copy of A Lot Like Christmas in Murder by the Book the other day, and I waffled quite a bit before leaving it on the shelf. Some years ago I bought The Best of Connie Willis, a book of "award-winning stories," only to find that I already had most of the stories in other books. It makes sense to republish stories, if the original books they appeared in have gone out of print, but I don't need duplicates of her stories. (I do have second copies of Jane Austen and Dorothy Dunnett's books, and a couple of Dorothy L. Sayers and Georgette Heyer's, but I don't collect duplicates, I don't have the shelf space for them.)

I just checked, and our library has A Lot Like Christmas. I'm now next in line for it. I can read the "new" stories and see if I need a copy. I can always drop by Murder By the Book again - maybe for Small Business Saturday this weekend. If I need a Connie Willis fix, I can read Crosstalk, which is still on the TBR shelves.

Still, it felt odd - to pass up a new Connie Willis book, and to practice bookish restraint!


6 comments:

  1. This happened recently to me as well. An author whose works I have bought as they have been published, including several one off short stories published a collection of those stories with one new one in it. As the stories bridge gaps between the novels, you miss it if you don’t read them. There was quite a rumpus amongst readers and I don’t think it will happen again.

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    1. That would definitely be a library book for me, if it was just one new story, but I needed that story in reading the novels.

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  2. It's very hard to resist buying the books of authors you love. I'm glad your library has a copy! Happy reading! :)

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    1. I think for me at least it's partly the fear of missing out. Maybe there's a really great story in that new collection, and I don't want to miss it :)

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  3. I still have "Crosstalk" to read too, Lisa. Maybe "All Clear" too, unfortunately. What I've been looking at is buying the ebook editions of the novellas (including some Christmas stories) as an alternative to buying books in which I already have the majority of the stories. Sometimes I do have duplications but only of the stories that first appeared in Analog or Asimov's back in the day when I had subscriptions.

    Karen P.

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    1. I hadn't thought about e-book editions, but that would be a good solution! Less expensive, and that wouldn't add duplicates to the physical shelves.

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Thank you for taking the time to read, and to comment. I always enjoy hearing different points of view about the books I am reading, even if we disagree!