http://www.dailycheapreads.com/post/2016/01/03/04/03/24/138893/collections-3-99/post.html

I was checking my favorite ebook sale websites this morning and saw this awesome deal on eReaderIQ.com. I immediately purchased.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0090WRZMA?redirect=true&ref_=docs-os-doi_0

Don't Miss Out!

I use this online price tracker that emails me when there are Amazon sales on ebooks I want. This may seem terribly handy, especially since I can set it to only tell me when there are books that are selling for especially low prices, like $2. Or so I thought years ago when I started using it.

Since then I've learned that sales at Amazon are not always like in bricks and mortar stores, where you had a vague idea about when sales would occur. Oh sure, it's still the major holidays, but it's also long before them and then sometimes a month after them, and suddenly there will be a LOT of emails with "hey there's this thing you want that's on sale, never mind that you just bought X amount of ebooks just yesterday!" Often it won't be just a few ebooks I've been wanting, but masses of them. And then suddenly more later in the week.Then I have to practice some restraint. Or try to.

So I gave in and bought Murder of the Century today - because I could not resist:

1) $2 price - again, the Amazon US store price, sorry everyone out of the US. (Someday I look forward to not having prices vary so much by region and we can reminisce about this as a past annoyance. Meanwhile check local ebook sellers, just in case there's any price matching.)

2) It's media related and I have a thing for journalism history - this deals with the US newspaper press/tabloids of the 1890s. (Yellow Journalism era.)

3) It's true crime. From the blurb on the Amazon page:

"On Long Island, a farmer finds a duck pond turned red with blood. On the Lower East Side, two boys playing at a pier discover a floating human torso wrapped tightly in oilcloth. Blueberry pickers near Harlem stumble upon neatly severed limbs in an overgrown ditch. Clues to a horrifying crime are turning up all over New York, but the police are baffled: There are no witnesses, no motives, no suspects."

4) And I've had it on my wish list since 2012, so yup, this one I bought without even the part where I pretend to pause and assess whether I really want it or not.

And thus endeth today's purchase saga.

Now I'm wondering if this is the warning shot before the sales blast in. At least it's reminding me that I need to sit down and ponder book presents for Christmas - I'll have to write another post about that because I need to get some genre buying ideas.

So what did I end up reading on the plane? I looked at multiple books, organized them into their folders and - then I read some Andrew Lang fairy tales. Because that was the best choice for something I knew I was going to fall asleep to.

Thanks to Dear Author I had to snag a sale ebook tonight - and it's one I've already read so I can definitely recommend if you're interested in this area of history.

How The Scots Invented the Modern World

I had to buy this because it's a book I've referred to more than once, it had me adding more books to my list to look up (and TBR), and I'm getting it in ebook form so I don't have to wonder where my paper copy is. Kindle version is currently 1.99 - at the US Amazon store however.

I'd call this serious history even though the tone is light here and there - lots of detail, footnotes, and historical figures you won't find info about easily except in this book. (And of course I forget names. I'm working on a 7 year old laptop with a bad trackpad so googling is not something I'll do much of atm.)

Now we'll see if I can figure out how to take photos on my phone tomorrow and still post them here. I'm sure if I manage that there will be lots of me grumbling in the accompanying text about how annoying this graphics change hooha is.