Book Blogger Hop (2)

The Book Blogger Hop is a place for book bloggers and readers to connect and share our love of the written word!  Hosted by Crazy-For-Books,  this weekly meme is an awesome opportunity for book bloggers to connect with other book lovers, get to know someone new and basically just share our love of books! So, grab the logo, post about the Hop on your blog, and start HOPPING through the list of blogs that are posted in the Linky list! 

This week's question:
How/where do you get your books? Do you buy them or go to the library? Is there a certain website you use like paperbackswap?

Hmmm... well I usually buy my books. I'm very materialist when it comes to books. I want to own them. I want to look at them. I want to caress them.

However, to cut down on my book buying, I would like to check out more books from my local library but that would entail them buying more newly published books in English. The English section of my local library is laughably small, a few Harry Potter books and some Penguin Easy Readers (simplified and abridged versions of classics or movies, of about 60 pages), so in order for me to get YA books from the library, first they have to be translated into Swedish -and let me tell you what a considerably small percentage of books are, although it's getting much better than when I was a teen. So books that are a few years old or just very popular (such as Twilight and The Hunger Games) can sometimes be found in a translated version. I understand that they don't have as wide a selection of English books as let's say an American, Australian or English library, for natural reasons, because most people in Sweden actually want to read in their mother tongue. Personally, however, I like reading the original, so when I pick up a Swedish translation in the library instead of buying the original English version it's because I'm poor. Or cheap. Or both.

Discovering The Bookdepository has largely increased the number of books bought, because of their fab prizes and free shipping. Buying English books in Swedish bookstores is usually rather expensive (again because the market for it is rather small) and the selection limited to very popular book series. So The Bookdepository is a blessing as well as a curse. Wide selection + cheap books + free shipping = larger orders = spending a lot of money. I'm just not as selective in my book buying nowadays. But then again, I love my books.