Jarir Bookstore is Saudi Arabia’s largest bookstore chain whose patrons flock the outlets more for consumer electronics rather than school and office supplies and paperback novels. If my calculations are correct, their store inventory has a book and gadget ratio of 3:7. Consumer electronics win!

I went to a branch nearby to buy a very specific gadget I’ve been eyeing for months only to find out that it finally got phased out and the units that went on sale the previous months were actually the last ones in existence. So instead of going home empty-handed, I went for what people are really supposed to be looking for in a bookstore – books. There were lots of books on sale and I was tempted to get cookbooks and travelogues but finally settled on the LOTR boxed set.

At the cashier, my purchase earned a lot of curious looks. Old school?

Then I realized if I were to buy SR150 worth of books each month then in one year, I would have bought books amounting to about SR2,000 which is just a little less than the prize of a Samsung Galaxy S II which according to reviews, is very much capable of running the Amazon Kindle Android application.

Is it time to go digital?

This gadget-looking LOTR box set from Harper Collins Publishing doesn’t really look good on my wall-mounted bookshelf I bought from a local DIY shop.