One of the many bonuses of visiting my family near Cambridge is that sometimes I manage to pick the same weekend that Galloway and Porter have one of their Warehouse clearance sales.

Every so often, they open up their general warehouse to the public to clear excess stock, normally for £1 a book. There is all sorts on offer, often quite a large selection of children’s books, but otherwise there’s everything from the Canterbury Tales to the X-men, travel books, maps, reference books, academic books and a few items that make you wonder who’s idea it was to actually print that. With it being a mixture of hard and softbacks, I limit myself to buying what I can physically carry, so today I got away fairly lightly with just the 17 books. They’ll show up on my librarything when I get a bored few minutes to scan them in.

Unlike my groaning shelves, I find these book sales to be quite relaxing and fun to explore. They’re well attended so there’s enough of a crowd to vanish into, you can just browse along the tables and have the freedom to dip into books that you normally wouldn’t consider reading the back of. Not that I would advocate buying anything terribly embarrassing of course, I did go with my family after all, but with each item you pick up costing a pound, you don’t have to worry about wasting too much money on something you’re unlikely to read.

Now I just need to finish getting the reading-a-lot-of-book-spines crick out of my neck..