Thanks for the advice--a lot of suggestions for heading to the library, but the biggest problem is this: I live in a small town. How small? When the aforementioned library installed new automatic sliding doors at the entrance, it was (I swear, this is absolutely true) the top story on the front page of the newspaper. With banner-sized headline. Needless to say, selection up here ain't that good. (It's really not *that* bad, but the book isn't in their inventory.) Every time they have a used book sale, I always look (and whenever I'm in Grand Rapids, I stop in a couple of used book stores there to see if they have a copy), but thus far, no luck.
I've spent a lot on books before, and I'm a big reader, so it's not really that terrible to me to spend a lot on a book. I did end up finding a copy and buying it for about $90. My thought is that if I really don't like it or am really disappointed that I spent this much on it, there's obviously enough demand on eBay for me to be able to get back what I paid for it. (Which I very well might do--I'm much more interested in just reading it than being able to claim I have it in any sort of "collection"...)
As for other things I could spend $120 on...well, this is coming from my tax refund, and I had much bigger and better things to spend my tax refund on. Much better. Then the vast majority of the refund disappeared into my car. (And I don't mean it got lost under the seats...) So I decided that if I'm not going to get what I wanted with the refund, if most of it is going to go to necessity rather than pleasure, well, dammit, I'm at least going to get something pleasurable out of it... I'm thinking of this as my consolation prize--I had a shot at the grand prize, but I'm leaving with the Rice-a-Roni...:-)
