Book Joy! And Stuff

I’m so tick­led! In the last two weeks, I’ve found not one, but two books that Sam and I have want­ed for ages at good prices on eBay!

First, I’ve been look­ing for
See­ing Red: The Rap­ture of Red­heads by Howard Schatz for years and years. Seri­ous­ly, it has to be at least five years since Sam first men­tioned that he’d love to have it. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it’s out of print, and the only thing I found for the longest time were used copies for $150 or more. It’s a gor­geous book, but that’s far more than I could pay for it.

I had the book on my wish list at Half.com, which is part of eBay, but for some rea­son, I also set up an eBay search a few months back, and final­ly got found a copy going for $35.¹For what it’s worth, Half.com still shows only the high­er prices. Weird. I did­n’t hap­pen to see the email until a day lat­er, and by then the sell­er had dropped the price fur­ther for some rea­son. It was more than I pay for most books, but after five years, it was more than worth it. We received it in the mail ear­li­er this week, and it is just as beau­ti­ful as any new copy.

That gave me an idea, so I set up a search for anoth­er book I’ve want­ed for a while, but could­n’t afford. John C. Lowe’s tome Your Guide to Meta­bol­ic Health came out in 2003, and I haven’t ever found it in stock any­where. It must have gone out of stock quick­ly because Ama­zon has only ever had used copies that I’ve seen. And again, they were always pricey—$180 was the price I’d seen most recent­ly.²It’s avail­able more cheap­ly now, but I still got a deal.

Today, eBay came through again! The “buy it now” price was very rea­son­able, so Sam encour­aged me to go ahead and get it instead of chanc­ing the auc­tion route.

Dr. Lowe has also writ­ten anoth­er book that’s specif­i­cal­ly about the meta­bol­ic treat­ment of fibromyal­gia, but it runs over $500. Appar­ent­ly, that one is intend­ed for physi­cians, rather than laypeo­ple. I have an eBay search going, but I’m fair­ly cer­tain the book I bought today has the infor­ma­tion I need in it. From what I’ve heard, it’s main­ly about fibromyal­gia and chron­ic fatigue syn­drome.³Aha—the pub­lish­er actu­al­ly sells the lat­est ver­sion of that one for $99.95. Why would any­body pay the used price? Why do the used sell­ers think they can demand so much?

I’m busi­ly read­ing my ARC of Women, Work and Autoim­mune Dis­ease: Keep Work­ing, Girl­friend! It’s good stuff.