Randomramblings

White teeth, definitely.

I'm always and all around recommending George R. R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire", a rich, complex not very magical and very morally ambivalent fantasy series, but as you are a medical student, I doubt you'd have time for that. So, for something short and sweet, go with Peter Beagle's "The last unicorn" (unicorns! metaphysics!), or Naomi Novik's "Temeraire / His Majesty's Dragon" (dragons and Napoleonic wars). These are all fantasy, far superior to Eragon which I also see on your list on the left.

Oh, boy, oh, boy! I just realized I was paying twice the amount last year when I bought some books in Waterstones. Had I ordered the set from Amazon.co.uk I'd probably get all the items at 25 to 50% discounted price. I think I'm not buying many books in London after all. It's far cheaper to place an order on Amazon.co.uk or place an online order at Waterstones.com and opt for free store delivery than it is to actually go there any buy it yourself and save only a penny or two.

Am I the only person on Earth who realized that prices were much lower for internet placed orders?

Lilit - I read White Teeth in 2005. See here. I did read a translation, but was very happy with it. In a year or two I might read the original, though.

Eva - first of all - a warm welcome! Now, I did search for Song of Ice and Fire on Amazon, but it found several books (like SOIF, book 1, SOIF, book 2 etc.). Was this published as several separate books or as a single volume? I read Eragon out of curiosity (many people seemed to like it), but was quite disappointed with it.

hiya! I have a very good bookstore here in Amsterdam with very budget prices... like 5-10€ per book. We can make a deal and I buy and send them to you...
Waterstones is one of the most expensive bookstores...

Get The mother tongue & The short history of everything both by Bryson.

Nadezhda, thank you. The truth is, I found your blog some time in my slo-tech days and have been following it ever since - I even forwarded the link to it to some other medical students I know, and to some people who have been waxing acerbic on the state of Slovenian health system. I'm not much of a commenter anywhere, but I can't pass up the chance to recommend books.

The ASOIAF series is currently at four doorstopper volumes, which is why I thought you might not have the time for it. You can see the first volume and read an excerpt here , and amazon.co.uk sells it too.

Enjoy London, even if you don't bring back many books, and for web ordering, check out amazon.de too, because it has a flat-rate 6€ postage, regardless of the number of items ordered.

As for Eragon - saying that I don't think much of it would be an understatement. I thought it was juvenile, inarticulate, badly plotted, badly characterised and plainly badly written, so I thought you could maybe use something to figuratively wash the bad taste out of your fantasy literature mouth.

Oh, and just to make it clear - in no way do I place Harry Potter in the same category as Eragon. I am eagerly awaiting my own preordered copy of Deathly Hallows. :-)

Ambala - oooohhh! You're so kind. Getting the books isn't mandatory anymore since I discovered that they're so much cheaper online. But if I ever get to visit you, I'd be delighted to see that bookshop. And not only is Waterstones expensive, they aren't that well stocked either.

Boyfriend has Short history, so I'm only going to try to get my hands on The Mother tongue. Thanks for your input! :)

Eva - another ooohhh today. I'm very flattered to hear you forwarded the link to my blog. My dream is to have three months of holidays once and get to read all the books I've been yearning to. ASOIAF was highly recommended to me before, so I'd really like to find the time to read it.

I think that from now on instead of fretting over the books Konzorcij sells, I might order several books online once or twice a year and enjoy them for the rest of the year.

I think Eragon was fine if indeed the author was 15 (or so) when he wrote it. But then again, the "book" I wrote when I was 15 never got published. The plot is indeed predictable and the characters are rather one-dimensional. What bothereed me the most was his desire to immitate Tolkien's narrative style. But he failed. Dare I say miserably?

I agree with those who recommend you to avoid buying new books in UK bookstores -- they tend to sell most of them at the RRP, whereas amazon typically gives a 30% or so discount, which makes the book cheaper even if you have to pay VAT (8.5%) and shipping costs (L3 per book from amazon.co.uk). (Of course, the bookstores themselves are still worth a visit, in my opinion -- at least you can browse the books, write down the titles of the interesting ones and buy them online afterwards.)

I also recommend people to check the prices via addall.com -- often it turns out that different booksellers have widely different prices. If the book you're interested in has also been published in the U.S., amazon.com tends to be significantly cheaper than amazon.co.uk. Often I find that amazon.ca is even cheaper -- they have discounts on many books that are sold at the RRP by amazon.com. Of course, if you are (very) patient, eBay can also be a source of insanely good deals.

If you're going to London, I recommend you to also visit the secondhand bookstores -- there are lots of them on and around Charing Cross Road, if I remember correctly. Not just the famous ones like Foyle's, but also the tiny small ones which often turn out to have huge stocks of books in the basement :) You might find some real bargains there.

Well-advised - I was rather hoping you might help me out. A big thanks!

Is it true that if I order books from amazon.com they send them from their nearest warehouse and ideally you don't have to pay additional customs charges? The customs charges are the main reason I want to avoid shopping in the US. Patience isn't a problem, but I'm not too fond of e-bay. We'll see.

We're going to stop on Charing Cross Road as well, but I'll see whether there is enough time to browse through them.

Is it true that if I order books from amazon.com they send them from their nearest warehouse and ideally you don't have to pay additional customs charges?

Yes, it can happen. I think I've occasionally received books from e.g. Germany even though I ordered them from amazon.com; but it isn't something I felt I could rely on -- it's fairly unpredictable. And even when something does arrive from the U.S., it isn't necessarily the case that the customs will intercept it. Parcels of roughly the same size and value are sometimes intercepted and sometimes not.

The customs charges are the main reason I want to avoid shopping in the US.

It isn't really customs -- it's VAT (8.5%), plus typically some small more-or-less fixed fee (around 3 EUR, I think) which they charge you for opening your parcel and computing the tax :)

If you order from amazon.co.uk, you'll have to pay VAT as well -- they basically say "oh, we see that you are ordering to Slovenia, so we'll add 8.5% VAT to the amount we'll charge from your credit card, and forward the money to your taxmen".

I'm not too fond of e-bay.

Well, suit yourself, but my experiences with it have been overwhelmingly positive. Ask sellers lots of questions, ignore the ones that seem dodgy or have feedback below 99%, and you should be OK.

Ahh - you tempt me too much with e-bay! :) Also, books I read are fairly easy to come by, so I don't thin k I will have to rely on e-bay much, but I will check it out, just to be able to compare the prices and find the cheapest deals.

So far all the parcels I've recieved from US were intercepted - much to my annoyance. So I do really look forward to buying within EU.

So, basically, prices at amazon.co.uk don't have VAT included, but when they calculate the total sum, they add the VAT?

Is there a way to avoid that?

And again, thanks for your help! :)

Ahh - you tempt me too much with e-bay! :)

Heh heh heh :-] Why should I be the only one who has to suffer from temptations all the time :)))

Also, books I read are fairly easy to come by, so I don't thin k I will have to rely on e-bay much, but I will check it out, just to be able to compare the prices and find the cheapest deals.

I admit, for individual books that are easy to come by on e.g. amazon and similar sites, eBay is not necessarily a very good alternative, because even if the book itself is cheaper than on amazon, the shipping costs are likely to be much higher (especially given the recent price increases by the US Postal Service). But for out-of-print, vintage, antiquarian etc. books it can be great.

So, basically, prices at amazon.co.uk don't have VAT included, but when they calculate the total sum, they add the VAT?

Yes, that's right. And don't forget that the VAT applies not just to the books but to the shipping costs as well :)

Try to look on the bright side: if they didn't do this, and the Slovenian customs intercepted your parcel instead, you'd still have to pay the VAT, but you'd also pay their fixed processing costs (around 3 EUR, I think) and possibly the post office's standard commission for paying a položnica :)

Is there a way to avoid that?

Sure, and there's respectable precedent for it in classical Slovenian literature :)

But apart from smuggling, I don't know any practical alternatives. I suppose you can try ordering from some other online bookseller that won't process the VAT automatically, but then you can get your stuff intercepted by the customs here. Or try to find out if there are any clear criteria based on which you could determine if the customs will intercept a parcel or not. I guess there should be, e.g. based on declared value and/or weight or something of that sort, but I don't know for sure and I don't have the impression that the customs people are being entirely consistent about this anyway.

Another theoretical possibility is if you can get the seller to label the parcel as a gift (as opposed to merchandise) -- a gift being free, there's also no VAT for it -- but in this way both you and the seller are breaking the law, and the taxmen won't necessarily believe that it is a gift anyway.

Oh my, oh my. It's quite complicated, this shopping on Internet. I think I'm still going to order from Amazon, but not in a month or two. And then we'll see how that works out.

And hopefully the customs won't intercept my parcel (like they always used to do).