Here's the new "books I got" thread. :) I didn't buy them, but my daughter just bought ten volumes of the
The Sandman series by Neil Gaiman. I'm looking forward to reading them.
Yay! I was waiting for someone else to come up with a clever thread title. My brain is on its lowest setting these days. LOL
I bought two NEW books on Monday while I was waiting for my car to get it's 30,000 mile service. I probably would have abstained if I'd seen how much the service was going to be. 0.0 Anyhow, I'm glad I got them because I've been waiting for these to come out in paperback for a looooong time. They were on the Buy One , Get One Half Off table at Borders.
Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by
Neil ShubinBonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach
(Blasted touchstones)
Message edited by its author, Jun 4, 2009, 2:46pm.
Mr Toppit came in the post today, seemed like an interesting story.
My very own copy of
Havemercy came in the mail yesterday from an ebay auction. This was one of my 2008 favorites that I really wanted a copy of for myself. Now I just have to figure out how to get the library stickers and cigarette smell off the book.
Jenson...DL...#5!- A little Goo-Gone helps with stickers most of the time, and I find that if I place a book in an airtight bag/container with dryer sheets or other smell-good item you can ditch almost any smells. The longer it sits the better of course, so if you want to read it NOW it might not work so well... ;)
1 - Oh, nice! I've only read the first three so far, but wow! They're a little expensive for me to buy, even as the big compilation editions.
She treated herself for getting all A's for the semester and working really hard. :)
MrsLee, I heartily approve of your daughter's purchase! Them's some awesome books.
I wasn't planning on buying any books for the next while, but I think I need to go on a little book-hunting jaunt at lunch. I've gained a new series addiction, and I'm hoping the used bookstores around here will help me feed it. If not, I'm reasonably sure the library will oblige.
I didn't buy anybooks at all in May, and haven't bought any in June.
But My Sony E-reader came pre-loaded with some,
The poison study is quite readable and
the blue zone might be too. There's a CD of 100 other titles on it as well, I'm going ot have to decide what 'counts' as an LT catalogueable book and what sits unused on a hard disc.
Eek! My June buying has been more than I wanted it to be already! Went for a three for two in Waterstones, buying the first two Jim Butcher Codex Alera books and
Fever by Christine Feehan. Yesterday I then spotted the second book in Naomi Novik's great series
Throne of Jade. Must stop buying books!
Technically I have bought three books in June, two of which for myself (
Sporting Chance and
Winning Colors) and one as a gift (a cook book), but I will not buy more books now before I have read some of the ones previously bought. I think. I have some good treats waiting for me, both fiction and non-fiction.
The crisis have brought the retailers to the brink of desperation and I might do some purchases on impulse, if the price is right ;-)
Well, my downtown bookstores didn't oblige me yesterday, so this morning I headed on over to Chapters to buy
The Invisible Ring by
Anne Bishop. I
did manage to get the next two books in the series, (
Dreams Made Flesh and
Tangled Webs), from the library, so I can binge, binge, binge! Horray!
#13 - I did. I bought those two as soon as I had finished
Hunting Party, which should be a hint... ;-)
I do think they're verging on YA, though, while the backdrop of how both society as a whole and specific individuals are affected when the rich, or one's parents, lives on forever provides for some added complexity for those of us lusting for such.
I just ordered:
The Four Agreements,
Seven Whispers, and another about To do lists.
I'll go get the real name...
To-Do Lists:From Buying Milk to Finding a Soul-Mate is it. I ordered used copies from Amazon but I will note that adding the mailing costs makes it very possible that this is more expensive than driving to a used book store and looking for these books. But time...I don't have the time....
shucks!
Message edited by its author, Jun 7, 2009, 8:10pm.
I have to share this with other book people. I picked up a signed copy of Jonathan Lethem's
Amnesia Moon on Sunday while shopping at the garage sale at
Dreamhaven BooksI wasn't expecting the Store to be open, just the Garage so that made it even more of a surprise gift to myself.
Edited To be clear: The Lethem book wasn't a part of the Garage sale, but I was able to go into the store and peruse the shelves.
Message edited by its author, Jun 8, 2009, 9:54am.
I got a big yay,
The White Dragon and
The Destroyer Goddess both by Laura Resnick came today, only took 10 days from Canada to the UK. So why does it always take a month or more when i get books from the US?
#22 The postal gods do not smile upon you when you shop from the US? That's odd, though. Are the shipping options the same? (That and "Your US packages have a tendency to get lost in the mail" is about all I can think of as for why that might happen.)
I received
Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith and
The People of the Sea today.
#22 - I'm Canadian, and my post office girl once told me that so much mail goes back and forth between Canada and the UK that there's rarely much of a lag with parcels. Even stuff sent surface mail tends to turn up really quickly.
I found the first Shanghainese phrasebook I've ever found outside of China in the remainders store the other day (it also has Mandarin and Cantonese, but that's not very exciting). Unfortunately it's terrible. The people who wrote it apparently don't know Shanghainese phonology at all. They don't mark stopped syllables or voiced syllables, and the tone marking is appalling. I don't know enough to be able to say for sure, but I suspect some of the translations are wrong too.
I'm happy to have it anyway, because it combines a few things I like: language books in general, books on Chinese dialects and books written about language by people who absolutely have NFI!
Message edited by its author, Jun 9, 2009, 7:24pm.
I accidentally purchased a used copy of
Great Expectations instead of
Bleak House for an LT group read (shakes fist at Amazon's dubious search results and my own lack of attention). So that arrived today along with a copy of
Ella Minnow Pea, which I did mean to buy. :o)
I purchased
The Coroner's Lunch which is actually pretty interesting as off-beat mysteries go (featuring a 72-year-old Laotian medical examiner). Picked up
The Club of Queer Trades which is also rather off-beat.
I think I'm just in an off-beat mood.
Message edited by its author, Jun 9, 2009, 8:26pm.
I am planning to buy a big amount (for me at least) of books when I travel to the UK next month, so I am laying low for now. However, I am planning to buy
Eternity by Greg Bear on Friday, as I am now reading my other two books of The Way series (Eon and
Legacy) in preparation for it.
#22 - I've had packages sent from the US (surface, not air) arrive within anything between 5 and 45 days; usually it's 5-7 days and always in good condition. But I know that at least until some years ago the Swedish postal service didn't "guarantee" things going to the US as it was too common for packages to get lost or broken.
Tolkien's
Lost Tales was a purchase ($0.95). Several arrived via Bookmooch or the library's "take these, please" rack.
Ha, I decided waiting was stupid, so I just got
Eternity today. I'll just have to read more quickly now, as I can't wait to start!
Dead Until Dark showed up in the mail today via PBS and even though I'm currently reading THREE other books, I reallllllly want to burn through this one tonight. Especially since I just finished the first season of True Blood.
Decisions, decisions....
It's here! It's here! It's here! (And I'm sparing you all the caps-lock.)
The Angel's Cut is finally here! (But it won't touchstone.) EEEEEEEEEE! I'm bannng myself from starting it until I finish the other books I'm reading, though. Hopefully it gives me the kick I need to finish them asap!)
Also, the post also brought me
Crank by Ellen Hopkins which I was starting to fear lost. But it wasn't!
*does a little happy dance*
Warbreaker doesn't have a Kindle version yet, which is surprising since the whole damn thing was already online. Get on the stick, Amazon!
#37 - Can't you add it to your Kindle as a .txt file, then?
#38, No, it's a pdf, which as kawika has pointed out, cannot be read on a kindle.
btw, I was completely without work this morning and spent it reading
Warbreaker online. I'm utterly hooked, and I'll probably buy the hardback so I can finish it during my vacation next week. (Or I guess I could read it on my computer, but I wasn't going to take it since there's no wifi up there in the mountains where I'll be.)
Can you convert pdf's to txt files easily? The last time I checked, you couldn't but maybe there's been upgrades to Adobe Reader. (I think I have the editing version.)
Can you convert pdf's to txt files easily?
Not with Adobe Reader, I don't think, but you should be able to find online conversion sites that can handle it with ease.
#28 I see you have 'The Club of Queer Trades' by Chesterton. Have you read the Father Brown stories by the same author? Or any of the Bryant and May detective series by Christopher Fowler? Definitely off beat!
Message edited by its author, Jun 11, 2009, 4:02pm.
#40 Cool, I'll check it out! Thanks!
#40 OK, so back at the office now, the version of Adobe Reader we have seems to have converted it to a txt file, which I emailed to myself at home. We'll see how well it reads on the Kindle. Usually not a problem, although occasionally there are too many carriage returns and you have to tweak it.
And it's not as if I don't have a bunch of great titles on my TBR, as well as needing to finish up
The Little Stranger, which rocks. I am so greedy when it comes to great books.
That pesky Brandon just writes such compelling books!
Warbreaker's online? Where?!
Ebooks are dangerous, think, want, buy, have. Just like that.
peril's gate,
Grand conspiracy**
Green mars and
blue mars*
only a few minutes work. Plus various free stuff too.
*I already have
red mars as it was a free Tor promotion a few months back. I've just started it, and it immidiately convinced me to buy the sequels. So Tor's evil plan worked.
** Stormed fortress book 8 was also available. But very very bizarely book 7
traitor's knot wasn't to be seen. ?? how to convince people to buy ebooks! Lets only stock random parts of the series.
*sigh* damn those crafty buggers at Waterstone's they've duped me out of another £15 with their evil "sale on SF, Fantasy & Horror" online. When you wave a Trudi Canavan book at me which is cheaper than on amazon then i will instantly decide that i need there and then and buy the bloody book! argh and i bought another book (which i have already read but wanted my own copy) cos i originally thought that there was a minimum purchase amount (there wasn't) so now i'm getting
The Magician's Apprentice and
Parasite Positive in the next week or so which will be a welcome addition to my ever-growing TBR pile.
ETA: stupid.bloody.touchstones!!! GAH!!!
Message edited by its author, Jun 12, 2009, 7:10am.
Yesterday I bought
Sanderson's
Warbreaker, which I then spent most of the day evening reading. I'm enjoying it so far though I can't quite tell where it's going...
I really wanted to get
Palimpsest by
Catherynne Valente but the bookstore didn't have it, stupid bookstore.
bluesalamanders, if you like Valente's work, you might be interested in her most recent LJ
post. She's writing a story and serializing it online.
The Botsoc shop at Kirstenbosch yielded a fairly predictable
Southern Overberg flower guide by Penny Mustart and others,
and the delightfully named
Beard Shaver's Bush by Ed Coombe and Peter Slingsby. This is all about Western Cape place names, and is fascinating.
A bookshop in Claremont (Cape Town) had Living amongst the Stars at the Johannesburg Observatory on the sale trolley. Interesting, but somehow one felt that the author quickly got bored with writing each section -- the interesting bits are often notable by their absence.
45 - Brandon Sanderson has the whole book
Warbreaker available in PDF on his site, for free. Do any other authors do this?
Message edited by its author, Jun 13, 2009, 7:33pm.
Ran into the bookshop today and picked up
Song for Arbonne for the group read. Also have someone picking up books for me from a convention- can't wait to see what they bring back!
#1
MrsLee: Ohhhh The Sandman!!! I've been slowly collecting all ten issues (very slowly, I only got the first two so far) to eventually have them all in new, pristine condition (I read them all years ago, and already got a few issues from a friend, who let me store them for him while he's studying in Spain. He said I'm the "keeper of the books" :P)
#7
Will: yes, each issue is around USD 15 to 20 on Amazon.com :S
I also want to do that with all ten issues of the
Y, The Last Man TPBs. As soon as I complete The Sandman collection, of course. And I'd like to have some issues of
Fables, only it's an ongoing comic, so... But it's got such gorgeous art!
Yesterday I bought a gorgeous book for my mom on Catalan cooking (her parents were Majorcan, and the two cuisines more or less blend into each other). It's the Spanish version of this book:
Williams-Sonoma Foods of the World: Barcelona: Authentic Recipes Celebrating the Foods of the World. It's got such beautiful photographs, and I love it that the recipes have both the original Catalan name and the Spanish translation. Mom and I spent a good while poring over the pages and reading back the Catalan names. :)
I also went against 1) my vow not to buy more books until I've made a huge hole in my TBR pile and 2) my "green" resolution of not buying new books, but rather used ones, and got myself
Blaze (I can't resist Uncle Steve when he's winking at me from a shelf.)
I received my ER book,
Broken Angel by Sigmund Brouwer. I'm already intrigued and eager to read more, except I'm listening to Neil Gaiman read
The Graveyard Book right now. I have to buy that, I love it and I love him reading it.
It's always dangerous finding "new" used bookstores blue. My husband and bookshelves both groan equally when I do ;-)
eta - good haul by the way.
Message edited by its author, Jun 16, 2009, 10:17am.
Hehe yes, so very, very dangerous! And I could have gotten so many more books, it was exciting to find a used bookstore with a decent SF section.
And if I don't like these, I can take them back for more credit and get more books...right...yup...oh dear.
And thanks :D At least three or four of those books have been on my TBR list for ages and I either hadn't found them or hadn't gotten around to getting them before.
LOL, And if I don't like these... yes, we think alike - very dangerous bookstores - those used bookstore places hehehe.
Picked up a copy of
Integral Life Practice a day or two ago. Wilber is a genius, but he can be a bit difficult to understand at times, so I'm hoping this'll help me get a better understanding of some of his ideas.
Goodness, I found a new used bookstore myself. Picked up:
4 books from the Thoroughbred series by
Joanna Campbell, for 95 cents a pop, yay for recollecting!
Bellefleur by Joyce Carol Oates.. reading it now, my first Oats, fantastic.
Lorna Doone by R. D Blackmore
The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate: Two Novels by
Nancy MitfordI also stopped at Borders and picked up the 4th graphic novel in the Buffy season 8 series
Time of Your Life and the first volume of the graphic novel series,
Strangers in Paradise.
Oh and PBS has recently brought me:
Horseplay by Judy Reene Singer,
Sackett's Land by Louis L'Amour,
Doomsday Book and
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis,
The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett, and
Embers by Sándor Márai.
...Help me...
I just picked up
Freakonomics as I am going on a four-day business trip and I need something light to read when I just want to wind down a bit, alone in my hotel room....
I had some time to kill yesterday, so I browsed through the library sale on the offhand chance that they'd have something from my wishlist. It paid off: I found a nice paperback copy of
Kushiel's Justice by
Jacqueline Carey. I've got the final book in the trilogy winging its way to me via BookMooch, so I'm looking forward to reading the whole thing in one great clump sometime this summer.
#63 xicanti - it's so satisfying to fill in the holes in a series! Have fun.
I just bought
Memory and Shadow by K J Parker (no Pattern but there is always another day);
The Puppet masters;
The House at Pooh Corner;
Starlight;
Treasure Box;
The Praise Singer; King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table; Chinese Vegetarian Cooking; Longman Illustrated Animal Encyclopedia and Windows XP for Dummies (maybe I'll learn how to use this thing now). All second hand and I only spent just over £12. Well worth battling my agoraphobia for.
Edited for typo
Message edited by its author, Jun 18, 2009, 3:32pm.
Today my husband and I are celebrating our 23rd anniversary along with Father's Day. Our planned outing hit an unexpected problem, but as we weren't too far from Chawton, Jane Austen's former home, he took me there to visit her house instead. Having had a very large and awkward volume of her collected works for many years, I treated myself to a boxed set of her collected works: tiny volumes with gilt edges and ribbon markers, lovely to hold as well as to read.
@66- *goes completely green with envy* ;)
Last Saturday, discovered that the local secondhand bookshop is moving across the street. Also discovered that they had a HUGE supply of hidden books occupying most of the upper floor of the building they're in now -- and here I thought the rather miserable selection at street level was all they had. So I came away with
The Color of her Panties and
Viscous Circle, bith by Piers Anthony. If ant regulars come to Durban, I'd love to point you towards Msasa Books in Hillcrest; does anybody know how I go about adding this place to the invisible "Favorite Bookstores" line on my profile?
First you have to Add venue, under the tab Local, and then you Favourite it.
Thanks, Busifer!
> 66 I swore I wouldn't buy any more copies of Jane's works, but those might be an exception.
I can't call this a "Green Dragon Meet-up Book," because that was Saturday, and I just bought this today. But it is the coolest, geekiest book ever. It's called
Science Fiction Quotations. I'm already in the "Cs" and I'm loving it.
Oh wow, I need that book!!!
*adds to wishlist*
;-)
That was my thought too, Busifer. Hah!
>72 Musereader - I know they are pretty weighty tomes but I found that
The Pillars of the Earth zipped by quite nicely once I got into it properly and I really enjoyed it. Although I haven't got round to reading
World without end yet.
My massive amazon order arrived today much to the disgust of my sister who had to sign for the huge package it came in. Now i have 10 new books to devour although i know it'll take me a fair while to plod through
The Count of Monte Cristo which is even heftier than the Ken Follett books!
#77 - I don't think you'll do much plodding through The Count, it's really quite a page turner.
>79 hopefully not- I'm a pretty fast reader and if it's as much of a page turner as i've heard then it may only take me a week or two of solid reading to get through.
I just returned from a trip to Copenhagen. For airplane reading I bought
Freakonomics. While I was there I got a souvenir guide to the National Museum and a book about their medieval collection. I also got two books about the Royal Library, one about the history and one about their best pieces. :D
I just got a Folio packet with "Emil and the Detectives" (for the baby) and "The Devils Dictionary" (for me)
Another Folio Packet with "Peter Pan and Wendy (for baby) and "The History of Africa (for wife &me) is on the way.
I found out that building a library for our baby before its born is a great excuse to squirrel away more books.
Now I just need a good name for baby's LT account....
#83 congratulations on the baby. I had tons of books for my daughter, too.... I read to her before she was born.
You're right, it's a great excuse to buy more books.
#72 musereader I just re-read Pillars and it was a wonderful as I remembered. Have fun. I have World but haven't decided when to read it yet.
#84 Unorna, the book is the beginning of a very ambitious series. I found the opening stunning, and the rest quite readable. The ending is a cliffhanger, but I understand that the sequel is in schedule soon, so the wait shouldn't be too bad.
#86 & #87. Thanks very much. I work in a hospice charity shop, in the book dept. and that's where I found it.
#84 - I thought it was quite good but was disappointed when the release of part two was delayed, about a year ago. I was under the impression that the whole trilogy had been written already but chopped up in three parts, but no, he was still writing...
I do hope Janny is correct!
Dear Busifer, thanks for the information, has part 2 been published yet??
I'm not Busifer, but I think the next book, (
The Wise Man's Fear), is supposed to be out next spring. Rothfuss just turned in the manuscript a couple of weeks ago.
Just downloaded
Naamah's Kiss, another new Jacqueline Carey, this one set in the same world as the Kushiel series. Something cool to read on the plane to Vegas. (As if I don't have bunches of other stuff on my Kindle.)
#74
Cool! I love the subtitle,
From the Inner Mind to the Outer Limits, ha! :D
Yesterday I went to pick up the last package from my latest online shopping spree -- mostly things for the laptop, I was a good girl and only got one, ONE book!
It's a used copy of
The Gunslinger. I already have it, but I lent it to a friend years ago and I haven't been able to contact him. :( I figure if he ever returns it (*), I'll have two copies and I won't mind that. :D I already read it, and I have all 7 books in the series, but only got halfway through book 3 before I gave up because I was so busy that I didn't have time to read. That was ages ago. I now want to start again from the beginning.
(*)Oh, and besides, I have the
Ender series, which I borrowed from him. So...
Message edited by its author, Jun 26, 2009, 2:39am.
#91 - Only three years late... ;-)
Well, I purchased
The Graveyard Book, hardcover, and today I bought 84 Charring Cross Road, paperback, with a tip I was given at work last night. Now I have to wait for them to arrive!
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