Bad feeling#1: My Wish List keeps getting bigger. Everytime I strike off two items from the List, ten more arise – seemingly from nowhere ( er…. amazon and eBay and Best Book stall and…) – and proceed to attach themselves firmly to my rather intricate priority-algorighm-based Queue. In doing so, they also manage to make mincemeat out of the aforementioned algorithm. A hasty reassignment of priorities becomes inevitable. One fine day, I find two more items in the List that correspond to priority level=HIGH and accordingly mark them, and then, out of the corner of my eye, I see ten more…

*sigh* I believe the picture is clear.

Bad Feeling#2: Lately the rate at which entries are being struck off my Wish List is disturbing. This would, in any other circumstances, be A Very Good Thing. But from Bad feeling#1 above, this also implies that – duh – the List keeps increasing by eight entries everytime I strike something off. I feel like a black hole. (Yeah, it’s “black” with an L, not without) Everything I want, I seem to find.

Case in point: This Saturday, I didn’t have anything to do. Just came to the office and decided to check up on (for no reandom reason) Jeff Smith’s Bone resources on the ‘net. Went to Amazon, checked out what Trade Paperbacks were available, also checked out listings on eBay. Nothing special in mind, just checking up on a beloved comic ( I read only two Bone comics so far, and it lives up to all expectations)

In the evening, some of us decide to go for a movie, and after getting the tickets, I bring up the idea of hanging about at Abids for some panipuri. No problemo, off we went. And I popped into MR Books for a dekko.

Gasp! THREE Bone trades for sale. The only saving grace, (to me) was that they were priced very competitively at five hundred rupees each.

As usual, the Wishlist had to be updated too. I found these books there – George Lucas: A BIography by John Baxter. Bladerunner:The Making of the Movie. Eoin Colfer – The Wishlist ( ironic? ) in Hardcover. TH White – The Sword in the Stone. Patricia Highsmith – The First Three Ripley novels in glorious hardcover. Rick Cook – The Wizardry Cursed.

Four of these – The Lucas book, White, Cook and Highsmith, I already bought. I even finished The Sword In The Stone in one night. It was really a fun read. ( Sometimes, I think I should ditch white-read reads, and go for boring ones that make me snore in five minutes. I am really feeling sleepy now, only because I could not put that book down last night)

Now, the major question on my mind is: do I go ahead and buy the Bone books? Or do I wait for a future eBay stroke of luck? I wanted to read those books. They are supposed to be very good. More information about Bone here. And here. And here and here and here.

The pros: Good books. Definitive part of comic collection. Lesser items on Wishlist if I buy this. Don’t think I would get TPBs at cheaper price in India, especially in the near future. If I don’t buy them, some crazy kid with a rich father will!!!!

The cons: I usually prefer original comics, rather than TPBs. Chances that I might buy them, as in, the whole series, on eBay someday. Too high a price for a second-hand bookstore. The Hypothesis of Indian Comic-book Instability states that I might see it tomorrow, or in two days, or in two months at a Lifestyle sale for 50 rupees each.

To buy or not to buy? Time’s running out! So’s my control.

Go ahead, convince me. Please!

Addendum: Anybody who’s into computers and fantasy and things Pratchettian and Gaimanish should make it a point to read Rick Cook’s Wizardry series. I had bought the first book on a whim ( I liked the cover blurb) at a book sale, and it was really funny….The basic premise is this – a master programmer from our world is kidnapped by a Wizard into a magical dimension, only the old fellow croaks before he can tell Wiz Grumwalt why he has been summoned. And after being on the run from Dark Critters( who want to kill him only because he’s been summoned by the dead Wizard), with an errant (and extremely beautiful) Hedge-witch, Wiz decides to take things in his own hands. What happens next? Aah! Head here for two books in the series that are available online.

On a similar note, Carl Hiassen’s Skin-Tight is probably the only book where you’ll find a guy getting his eye poked out by his wife’s recently-silicon-enhanced nipple.