Book-related squee

[telophase]

On Sunday I got a notification from the Amazon.com.uk Marketplace that my order had been processed and shipped. Which confused me for a bit until I remembered the pre-order I'd put in for the exceptionally hard-to-find Bagthorpes Battered by Helen Cresswell. Yup, that was it. I'd put in that I was willing to pay up to £25 for it, and, annoyingly, the sale notification failed to list the price they charged me. A moment's thought later, I remembered that my bank reacts at about the speed of light to charges and posts them practically before the ink on my signature is dry, so logging in to my credit-card account revealed that I got charged the staggering sum of ... approximately £8*. For both the book and shipping from teh UK. Woo!




* $16.01 in real American money.

Comments

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I loved the Bagthorpe books as a teenager. I don't think I ever read that one.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

It was published in 2001. (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0340788240/qid%3D1147885795/202-9654669-2095047) I went on a Bagthorpe-rereading spree a few months ago when I realized she'd been sporadically publishing new ones, and there were three I hadn't read - The Bagthorpe Triangle, Bagthorpes Besieged, and Bagthorpes Battered (which I hadn't been able to find). They really read as one book that got split into three parts, since the first two don't end so much as stop. (Bagthorpes Liberated might also end that way, but I don't remember.)

After this, I'll ahve to attepmt to find a copy of the BBC show The Bagthorpe Saga (http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/guide/articles/b/bagthorpesagathe_1299000186.shtml). XD

All of the Bagthorpe books:

* Ordinary Jack
* Absolute Zero
* Bagthorpes Unlimited
* Bagthorpes v The World
* Bagthorpes Abroad
* Bagthorpes Haunted
* Bagthorpes Liberated
* The Bagthorpe Triangle
* Bagthorpes Besieged
* Bagthorpes Battered

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I think I only read up to Liberated, and you're right that it stopped rather than ending.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

If that's the one that ends with ... er, some of them in a taxi, IIRC (Uncle Parker and the tramp? Maybe Jack as well?), then Triangle picks up mere seconds after Liberated ends. There's a short rundown of What Happened Previously, and it continues on.

[m00nface.livejournal.com]

Interestingly enough, we all consider American money play money too, probably because such large amounts of it seem to be worth so little against sterling and it bears a striking resemblance to Monopoly money.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Your money is just so cute and colorful! It looks like play money! XD

Although it seems to be worth so little against pounds sterling, I learned that when I was in Wales for a semester, I had to stop converting to save my sanity - I'd go into a McDonalds* and look at the prices and think "Hey! The food cost exactly the same!" And then I'd realize that it was in pounds and not dollars, do the conversion - it was at about $1.80/pound then, just as it is now - and go OH MY GOD I AM PAYING TEN DOLLARS FOR A MEAL AT MCDONALDS. It was much easier on my sanity to think only in pounds.

But WTF is up with you guys charging for packets of ketchup? MY ANCESTORS FOUGHT FOR FREEDOM FROM HAVING TO PAY FOR PACKETS OF KETCHUP.

* In my defense, I was eating British school cafeteria food most of the time, and not good food, which made me homesick for familiar junk food.

[m00nface.livejournal.com]

Clearly you needed to go elsewhere than the school cafeteria place! Prices here are completely ridiculous, for sure, but I think paying for ketchup is the type of the thing you find only in school cafeteria type situations. I can't remember ever paying for ketchup in a restaurant. That's just silly. (Or maybe it's a Welsh thing, I've never eaten out there in my life.)

So why were you in Wales? I don't think I know that story.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

No, I paid for ketchup packets in the McDonalds in ... either Swansea or Cardiff. :) It was back in the early 90s, however, so it's probably changed since then. :)

I spent the fall semester of my senior year of undergrad at Trinity College in Carmarthen. I was interested in Celtic studies at the time, and it seemed perfect. I ended up not having that great a time because I didn't meet any local students because they shoved all the one-semester Americans into the American ghetto end of one of the hostels, and we all ended up taking most of the same classes. Oh well. But parts of it were great - I took an archaeology course, and it's nice being in a country small enough that you can take field trips to the actual sites you learned about in class. :) And I spent 10 days traveling by myself after the semester ended and before I flew home, which was fun.