Top 10: Books for less than a Quid

Arthur Conan Doyle, Toni Morrison, Stephen King, Ian McEwan. What do these names have in common? Well other than being a few great writers they are also the authors of novels I've managed to find for a less than a quid. I get through books pretty quickly and it's sadly become expensive to get something new to read, between £5-15 per book depending on how lucky you get with sales. Charity shops and second hand book stores are my main source of literary narcotics for this very reason. You never find yourself paying more than £3 for a new world to immerse yourself in and that can be an important lifeline when you don't have a whole lot of disposable income. With that in mind I thought I'd share a few diamonds I've managed to dig up over the last few years and hopefully inspire a few of you to go prospecting for yourself.

10: Death Note Volume 3 by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata

This one felt like a real discovery for me because manga is a rare find in a charity shop and Death Note is one I've been meaning to read since I watched the a few years back. It was also in mint condition which is important when you consider it's a visual art form. So why so low on the list? Well because it's volume 3 and I don't own the first two yet. Still, I'm unlikely to see it so cheap again so it would've been crazy to pass it up till I had the first two.

9: Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

Catch 22 would earn a spot on my favourite books of all time list and at such a cheap price it is probably one of the best buys I've ever made. What stops it from being right up the top though is that it's a battered looking copy and somebody has attempted to cover the outer sleeve in plastic but done a really bad job. It's the words that count though and they are all present and accounted for.

8: Beowulf by ??

One of the oldest pieces of European literature we still have and a brilliant story. It may feel a bit dated now but it still has a lot of magic if you're willing to look past the archaic language. A bargain at 50p!

7: The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I got this brand new at one of those bargain book warehouses you sometimes get on the highstreet. They always have a crap selection stuffed with celebrity autobiographies but if you are looking for the classics there always seems to be one or two on special offer. A shame that I already knew how the case is solved (spoilers are hard to avoid when a work is over a hundred years old) but still a good read.

6: White Teeth by Zadie Smith

For some reason this seems to be in almost every charity shop I go into. Eventually I decided to give it a chance and now I can't figure out why so many people gave it away! Funny, complex and diverse it deserves a place on every person's bookshelf.

5: The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka

Another classic I managed to rescue from the shelves of the local Oxfam store. I've never read anybody quite like Kafka who mixes the bizarre with the banal in such a fashion that you find yourself totally accepting the weirdest of scenarios as if they were perfectly normal.

4: The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis

For 50p I got to see whether this scabrous, angry, disgusted, stylistic genius of a man was always the fatalistic misanthropist he seems to be in his later works. The answer was yes. Just as witty and just as hate-fueled as anything I've read by him it captures the worst side of people magnificently as always.

3: Dear Future by Fred D'Aguiar

Fred D'Aguiar is hardly a household name, in part due to the fact that nobody seems to know how its pronounced, but I still managed to grab a hardback copy of one of his lesser known novels in the Edinburgh charity shops. A lucky find I'm not likely to repeat for a long, long time.

2: The Fall of the House of Usher and Others by Edgar Allan Poe

Not only was I able to get this collection by the man who ushered in (yes, I know, I'm sorry but I couldn't resist the pun) the era of the modern short story for less than a pound but it is a pristine condition hardback complete with classy-looking gold leaf spine. 

1: Atonement by Ian McEwan

Ok so the copy of this I found might not be quite a attractive as my Poe or as unusual as my D'Aguiar but the reason this gets the top spot is that it is quite simply one of the best books I've ever read. McEwan is a favourite of mine as it is but Atonement is probably his best. A book so good that when you finish it you close it and sit quietly for a few moments just to let it all sink in.