I love Amazon so much.

I have a membership to their "Prime" service; it's kind of pricey up-front but it gets you a year's worth of second-day delivery for free (even on books sent to other addresses as gifts). Many of their things are Prime-eligible.

And today, I found something I'd been wanting.

My piano teacher had loaned me a copy of volume 1 of the Bastein "Piano Literature" library - it is the book that has Beethoven's Ecossaise in G (the first "real" piece I ever learned, and it will always hold a special place in my heart for that, I think). I've since more or less mastered the piece (memorized it even) and kept thinking she was going to ask for the book back...and I was (on my "own time") working on Bach's Minuet in G from the same book, so I was kind of loath to suggest returning it.

But then I decided to look for my own copy.

And yup, Amazon has it. Less than $5, even. (And they had others in the same series, which I decided to order as well). So now I have more books of fairly basic but "real" classical piano literature to work from. And I can give my teacher back her book; maybe there is another student who can be inspired by it.

(one good thing about the Bastien books for beginners like me is that they have fingerings marked, at least on the tricky bits, so you don't do it wrong, and so you don't do it inefficiently)

(Really, the Ecossaise and now, the Minuet are my "ice cream" pieces - they are what I play "for fun" when I've completed the teaching-pieces for the week).

They say money can't buy happiness but sometimes I think money CAN buy the tools for us to make ourselves happy with. Sitting down at the piano for 15 or 20 minutes before going to bed and slowly working my way through the Minuet in G or some of the other pieces I have is one of the surprisingly pleasurable things in my life right now.