I relate to that problem as I don't live in a city, am not affiliated with any university and find these books expensive too. It drives home how lucky we are to have astrological scholars like Ben Dykes, Rob Hand, and others who are making material available at reasonable prices. I do two things to get books like this 1) tell myself I'll buy it, read it and re-sell it (but then I never do) 2) get books like this as presents: being at a certain, I have had enough birthdays to fill a book shelf.
Its a pity someone is not running some kind of astrological postal library service, because I think many astrologers would find parts of this book very interesting. However, if they are like me, they will struggle with some of the discussions on time-cycles, the inability to understand what some of the footnote abbreviations mean, and the heavy emphasis on mathematics. I have to skim over a lot to find the points I am interested in, and it is very frustrating to know of no way to get better informed on those points - so even if you have the book, and read it, you will still left wondering how others are able to access their information.
(I'm on a laptop and about to close down, so will post this and come back to it later)

thanks deb,

astrological postal service - i like that idea! i am at the point of trying to find one other person who is willing to trade, or lend in exchange for other books.. there are a lot of books i would like to read, but buying them all is not an option.

regarding absorbing the info - i find that with many of these books. reading a book is not the same as being able to really understand how to use it. i appreciate the footnotes and the encouragement to read certain books to help understand the broader context of the material. it is especially fascinating delving into books from the deep past... we can't really completely understand what they were thinking, but it is fun to try. i have a hard enough time understanding books written in the present, let alone books from a 1000 years ago, lol..

back to the jupiter/saturn conjunction and its importance.. i found it refreshing to see chris brennan discussing the interesting coincidence of the history of astrology and the cycle of uranus/neptune.. there are many cycles we can look at. the fact traditional astrologers had a special focus on jupiter/saturn makes sense. it would be easy to overlook its importance with the discovery of these other planets further out.