Yesterday sneaked into a second hand bookshop and picked up the Hauerwas Reader in near mint condition for a fiver! Then Barth's The Word of God and The Word of Man, for not a lot more, came neatly wrapped in old fashioned brown paper with handwritten name and address. I still like olde worlde courtesies of this London bookseller (Pendlebury's), in contrast to the 21st C jiffy-bag or cardboard sleeve marketing efficiency of the major online retailers.
Spent ages in Waterstones unable to make up my mind what to do with Waterstone book tokens generously given. Too much choice? Or not in the mood? Or retail paralysis brought on by knowing whatever I choose is already paid for? Needed a latte to ponder profoundly on what might be life-changing options - a soft seat in the gallery, a couple of paperbacks to sip along with the coffee.
Then back to the task of choice. There's an involuntary inner trembling at the thought that I can have virtually any book in the shop for the asking - and the token of course. Richard Baxter the Puritan once likened heaven to a library where we would learn all the truth of God and ourselves - so to stand in a bookshop and choose books already paid for, is at least to stand just outside the door, of the vestibule, of heaven! So why the uncertainty, the dithering and swithering and browsing?
Norman McCaig's Collected Poems was a serious temptation and in Scottish vocabulary McCaig would recognise, I 'swithered'.
But then Niall Ferguson's The War of the World is another biggie that I want to read - few people grasp better, the macro-issues 
of 21st century global power plays.
Or a superb photographic celebration of Antarctica - coffee table size so long as it's a big coffee table!
So after all that I came away to think about it - when I have book tokens for a specific shop that ain't theological, then I don't buy theological. There's only so much theology any person needs, and can read - anyway some of the best theological reflection isn't found in theology books...but in poetry, history, natural history, in fact, books like the ones I mentioned above and can't make up my mind about.
There's a whole different take on God, life, love, morality, human relationships, in novels,(narrative theology?) travel books,(life as pilgrimage - journey?) biographies,(lived commitments). So no rush - well, no immediate rush - that is, I can wait another day... or two..., I think.
On the radio the other day a long debate about the cost of removing spat out chewing gum from Glasgow's pavements (about £2 per paving stone!) - reminded me of the complaint by the American critic Elbert Hubbard:
This will never be a civilised country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum.
Most of my life I've been doing my bit for civilisation - buying loadsa books, and not spitting out chewing gum!
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