or: Breaking a New Year Resolution with no excuses

I broke it.

I broke it and only considered breaking it or not for about 0.125 of a second.

According to my Book Buying Resolution for the New Year, I gave myself a few instances for when I would allow myself to buy a book. I set these because I am interested in a lot of things, I have a significant To Be Read Pile and I’ll buy a book (especially online) at the drop of a hat if it sounds interesting. In these instances, I would normally read a sample chapter first and then make a decisions. 

Not this time.

The book I bought has absolutely nothing to do with diving or my work in any possible way.

Though, like the book buying addict that I am, I can stretch it to make it related to just about everything. It’s that kind of book.

I didn’t do that in the 0.125 seconds.

It wasn’t necessary to make excuses.

The promise I made was to myself and I’m fine with breaking it.

I’m sharing the experience since it’s pointless to share a resolution if I don’t share how well I did in keeping it. That’s not how accountability works.

Not that it worked very well in this instance!

I had seen a particular online post twice over the last week that explained the general gist of the book without mentioning its name. It intrigued me so I did what any normal person would do, I researched it until I found out what it was.

Then I checked Amazon so I could have a more in-depth read about the storyline.

And then I noticed that it was only US0.49. Yes, you read that correctly, 49 US cents.

So here was a book with a very intriguing premise and the cheapest I had seen a book online in a very long time (partly helped by me ignoring any book promotional emails).

My finger hit the “Buy Now in HKD” button and I now have another book in my To Be Read Pile.

I’m very happy with this purchase and will read it before the year ends.

It’s called One, None and a Hundred Thousand by Nobel Prize Winner, Luigi Prandello. Originally written in Italian and published in 1926. It must have been a hard slog writing it since he started in 1909!

If you would like a free copy, it’s part of Project Gutenburg and can be found here.

It was always going to be a tough resolution and I think I’ve done pretty well to last until mid-October.

Here’s hoping another interesting book doesn’t appear in my social media feed a few times in a short period and intrigues me enough to warrant further investigation, a visit to Amazon and a pricing miracle.

Unless it has to do with diving or writing of course.

 

Thanks to Simple Minds for the title to this post.