In which Hanna, Ellie and Katie buy ALL the books in Chesterfield.

What can be better than a book blogger meet-up? Cake, gossip, talking about books and of course, BUYING ALL THE BOOKS. It's amazing that Chesterfield had any books left after Ellie, Katie and I had finished.

I met Ellie a little early due to bus times and car parking and the usual faffiness, so we had our first coffee of the day. I enlightened her as to my current life dramas, whilst she alternated between looking bemused and looking mildly frightened of the crazy soap opera character sat in front of her. Bless Ellie and her patience.

We met Katie an hour or so later, after sitting on the platform and meerkatting at every person wearing red that walked past us. We found her safe and sound and then pretty much immediately ran into Bex's doppelganger, towing a small child through Chesterfield station. The resemblance was uncanny, but even I'm above dodging through train stations trying to sneak photographs of unsuspecting women. Slightly.

Onto the books. We hit the charity shops first, because there's nothing worse than doing them last and then finding the book you just bought from Waterstones at £1.50 in a charity shop. Good job too. I ended up finding five books from my wishlist, that I'd gone to Chesterfield intending to buy, in charity shops, on a marketstall or in The Works. I am never that lucky. I may not have shut up about this ALL DAY.

I was pretty excited when I found The Girl Who Fell From The Sky - because a) it was recommended to me after I loved HhHH, b) it's slightly obscure so I wasn't expecting to even find it in Waterstones and c) it was 50p. 50p!

I think this might be my first read actually. I'm really looking forward to it and when I googled it to find the image above, 'girl who fell from sky movie' came up. Better get it read before there's a new and shiny film to hate!

I found A Dance of Cloaks and Wool in the same charity shop, along with two dresses. Which is great, because I totally needed new dresses.

See? Needed. Turns out I actually already owned one of them, but hey ho. 

Next we headed past a market stall selling books, although that doesn't really do it justice. It had all kinds of new hardback bestsellers, for absolutely ridiculous prices. The Mime Order, which only came out this year, was £4.99. I actually had to look at it twice to make sure I wasn't seeing things. Katie bought one of the new Stephen King books for £2.50 or something equally silly. 

Finally, I bought The 100: Homecoming from The Works. It's not been too great in there lately - I seem to keep finding the same books over and over again. In fact, I think I may have been the only one of us to find a book from there... but it was still totally on my wishlist :) I really liked The 100 and The 100: Day 21, so I was hardly going to turn down the third book for £1.99, was I? I'm surprised it was in there though - it's only just come out.  

Everyone knows those 80p little black classics don't count as real books, right? Never mind that I haven't read the four I already own, they don't count!!!

Three of these were actually on my wishlist. I spend quite a while hunting for The Invisible Library before Katie realised it was probably in the Fantasy section and whipped off to grab it for me, bless her socks. I'd intended to buy The Elite and The One today, as I really liked The Selection series but only own the first book. They only had The One in stock, but never mind - I'm not in a rush for the remaining book.

I'd also decided to see if I could spot The Little Paris Bookshop... unfortunately so had Ellie! For what now must be the sixth or seventh time, once of us managed to whip a book out from under the nose of the other. It's PenumbraGate all over again!

(incidentally, after all that, she still hasn't read it...)

Let's see, what's left... Ah, Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery. I actually saw this in WH Smiths but their copy was all grubby, so I wanted to keep an eye out for it in Waterstones. Ellie found it first, but thankfully they had more than one copy so she waved me over from across this shop. Book buying is a co-operative endeavour, I'll have you know!

It looks interesting and accessible, and it might come in handy for work too (I hasten to add that I'm clearly not a brain surgeon. If I was I could afford more than twelve books).

Lastly, The Peripheral. I'd never heard of this before, but it's about online gaming worlds merging into the real world, much like Ready Player One which I ADORED. It's obviously not going to be the same thing, but it looks like it might run along the same vein. Who knows, maybe I've found a new gem. 

And I'm done. I'm off to shamefully update my little TBR ticker in the corner. And I was doing so well. It was worth it though - I had a great day with Ellie and Katie. I love book shopping at the best of times, but there's nothing more fun than pulling books off a shelf and chucking into somebody else's basket because you know they need to read it.

What books have you bought this week?