I was going to link you to a blog post about book-buying addiction thing, but I can't find it. D: Anyway, I don't have any money, but my library always has a stack of old books for free. Whenever I go there I can't resist taking a few, even if I probably won't read it ever or they are random archaeology books. When I do get money, I like to go to used book shops...because they smell more book-ey than bookshops with just new books.
Right. So about three years ago I was tired of reading fantasy novels that just...weren't amazing. The ones that I had been reading were good, but I wanted something new. I started looking at book recommendations on this random forum put some on my list, but it wasn't until I saw Mistborn on my library's website (under a list of fantasy books) that I heard about Brandon Sanderson. I went to the library and checked out some of the recommended ones as well as Mistborn...which I read last. It totally blew my mind. I think I read it in 3 days, and kept telling my friends at school that they should read it. I immediately put the next two on hold and read through those really fast.
At this point, no one I knew read them and so I kind of stopped looking into Brandon's stuff. This is because I love talking to people about books, but had no one to talk to at the time. After about a month, my friend finally picked up Mistborn and read it in a week. It took her about a year to get through the WoA because of school and trips and such, then told me that WoK came out (I still wasn't paying too much to Brandon stuff at this point). I read through that in a week, then became a full-fledged fangirl.
Edit: I found the quote about book buying~
"Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it. Those who do not do it, think of it as a cousin of stamp collecting, a sister of the trophy cabinet, bastard of a sound bank account and a weak mind."
— Jeanette Winterson