Books Brought Home -- November 2010

Happy November! Hope we bring home lots of good reads this month!

From Audible:

Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope
Phineas Finn by Anthony Trollope
The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope
Phineas Redux by Anthony Trollope

Serious binge this week!

From Audible:

Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny
Great House by Nicole Krauss
Flight of the Maidens by Jane Gardam

Freak Babylon: An Illustrated History of Teratology & Freakshows by Jack Hunter

I received a copy of Grace Williams Says it Loud by Emma Henderson from The Book Depository yesterday.

I went into the bookstore today to buy a gift certificate, I came out with Amazonia by James Rollins, The Hickory Staff by Robert Scott, A Singular Hostage by Thalassa Ali, oh, and a gift certificate!

Have more books the enter,guess they will become 'November books',cause I couldn't get them in during October.

From the Library,

The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
The Mischief of the Mistletoe by Lauren Willig
An Impartial Witness by Charles Todd.

Well, went to the library this morning with SO. I ended up with 2 more books. A cozy mystery Murder in Volume by D.R. Meredith. I am leaving my comfort zone and picked up Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
it seems it has gotten good reviews.

I received the last two books from my Book Depository order in the mail today:

Such a Long Journey by Rohinton Mistry: This novel was recently banned by the University of Mumbai's from its undergraduate syllabus, after its presence was protested by an Indian fringe group.

Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution by Nick Lane: The winner of this year's Royal Society Prize for Science Books.

#7 & 8- I read both The Art of Racing in the Rain and The Matterhorn recently, and I can tell you, they are both excellent - you are in for some great reading!

I brought home:

The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'engle -- I've wanted this new cover for a while!
The Lost Daughters of China by Karin Evans
The Read Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease

I put the latest LJ Smith Vampire Diaries release back because A) my card didn't want to buy it and B) it was $10 which is excessive for a book I know will be a one time read.

So far in Nov. I've brought home:

checked out from the library:

Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges...(reading now, and loving it!)

from FOL booksales:

The Secret Eye by Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collkins (a replacement copy as mine is simply too old to try to read anymore.)

Black Coffee originally by Agatha Christie and adapted as a novel by Charles Osborne

A order from Amazon arrived at the door today, I received:

Black Sheep One by Bruce Gamble - a Christmas gift for my son-in-law
Nineteen Eighty-Three by David Peace
Heaven Is A Long Way Off by Win Blevins
Hocus by Jan Burke
Dead City by Joe McKinney

Waiting for my Early Reviewer book .

Went to the Friends of the Library and found A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul

Yesterday I was between a movie and supper at the shopping center where there is a Barny Noble store, so I went in. I came out with:

The Making of Avatar by Jody Duncan and Lisa Fitzpatrick. It shows signs of the possibility that it could have been a better book, but I thought the movie was such a tour de force that I should have the book regardless. It was discounted 20%, and I got my Readers Advantage, or whatever, discount, and I'll get another 5% credited to my Barnes and Noble credit card, I think. There is, right now, no cover in LibraryThing for it, and I don't have a scanner.

Today I went to Borders after church because I had a coupon and Borders Bucks and thought I might go to a concert later, but I didn't.

Ha'ena: through the eyes of the ancestors by Carlos Andrade. A friend at church was happy that she had read this, and there aren't many more books at Borders that I want at their prices.

Robert

I went to the library again, to pick up The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson.

While I was there, I couldn't resist visiting the FOL booksale again and picked up three more books. (Does it ever end? Lol!)

The next two I haven't yet read in the Amelia Peabody series:

The Ape Who Guards the Balance by Elizabeth Peters

and

The Falcon at the Portal by Elizabeth Peters

I also picked up a mystery that sounded light and fun:

Cities of the Dead by Linda Barnes.

I really, really need to train myself to visit the library without visiting the sales. I have no willpower, lol!

I recently re-read Such a Long Journey by Rohinton Mistry (initially attracted to it by the title, which is a line from T S Eliot's, Journey of the Magi.) It is a richly told story, full of well drawn characters against the background of modern India. A compassionate and at times very funny story, with a sad ending. There are quotations from Eliot's work throughout.

Mistry has written several other novels and a book of short stories: all are worth reading.
Colin Weeden

In the mail today from Abe Books, a little book of poetry:

Ignatz by Monica Youn. This is a thin book of ostensible poems in short lines aimed at or about the mouse in Krazy Kat, sorta. I think Kidzdoc recommended it. I don't do recent poetry well, but I thought I'd have a look at it because some of the greatest fiction of the twentieth century was that comic strip.

Robert

From Audible:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, narrated by Elijah Woods

Just finished Ape House. Liked it! Brought home the following:
Beautiful Darkness
Shiver
Glass Castle
So many books so little time to bury myself in one.
=:)

House Calls and Hitching Posts
Room

Received my ER book Book Lust to Go by Nancy Pearl and my Member Giveaway The Heroine's Bookshelf by Erin Blakemore. Both on the same day what a nice surprise.

I was out and about with coupons yesterday.

There were a couple of arcane books about Japanese history that tempted me at Borders, but they were not for right now -- I got Fluke. The two books I've read by Christopher Moore struck me as humorous and warm, so I thought I'd try another that was not among his supernatural ones.

I came away from Barnes and Noble empty handed. I hadn't found a book to buy, and I put up the issue of Foreign Affairs that I had in hand when I found only one cash register open for a line of about eight people.

When I got home, I found Damned Good Show in my mailbox. I think that this was recommended by wandering_star. There is considerable foolishness in the military. I thought it might be pleasant to look at it in the British military of World War II.

Robert

Other bookcrossers (users on Bookcrossing.com), have been very generous to me lately! In the past few days I've received Diary of an Ordinary woman by Margaret Forster, and two Stieg Larsson books, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. All unsolicited! (I would never, ever go beg books!)

Finally got some of my books entered.

Historical Fiction:
Attila: The Judgment by William Napier

Mystery:
The Samurai's Daughter by Sujata Massey
The Pearl Diver by Sujata Massey
The Typhoon Lover by Sujata Massey
Girl in a Box by Sujata Massey

Fantasy:
The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers

Non-Fiction:
The Parthenon Frieze by Jenifer Neils

Books for my Arm Chair Book Group:

Non-Fiction:
Beyond the Sky and Earth by Jamie Zeppa, Bhutan
Waiting for Snow in Havana by Carlos Eire, Cuba

Fiction:
Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin, Rwanda
Half a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Biafra

My Reading Life
I Still Dream About You

Went to Half Price Books. Bought no books for my self. Found some nice Christmas presents.

Two BookMooch books arrived today:

Falling Man by Don DeLillo
The History of Henry Esmond by William Makepeace Thackeray

From PBS yesterday:

The Pearl: Erotica from the underground magazine of Victorian England, originally and anonymously published in 1879. The poems are absolutely fantastic!

From Borders:

The Walking Dead Vol 1 byRobert Kirkman & Tony Moore.

A Christmas stocking stuffer for my grandson.

Stopped by the FOL booksale on the way home from the doctor's yesterday and bought two books:

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf which I read years and years ago and didn't much care for. I don't think I was mature enough to appreciate it at the time. I've read much of Woolf's other work, including To the Lighthouse, and loved it, so I think I'm ready to re-read Mrs. Dalloway.

I also picked up The Iliad by Homer. I've never read it, but read and loved The Odyssey a couple of times. How could I not read The Iliad in that case?

Stopped by the FOL booksale on the way home from the doctor's yesterday and bought two books:

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf which I read years and years ago and didn't much care for. I don't think I was mature enough to appreciate it at the time. I've read much of Woolf's other work, including To the Lighthouse, and loved it, so I think I'm ready to re-read Mrs. Dalloway.

I also picked up The Iliad by Homer. I've never read it, but read and loved The Odyssey a couple of times. How could I not read The Iliad in that case?

From the library, where they would only allow patrons to borrow 2 books today because the computer system was down:

Amusement for All by LeRoy Ashby and The Queen's Head

In the past week I've received five books; first, two LT Early Reviewer books:

False Friends, Faux Amis: Book 1 by Ellie Malet Spadery
Where We Know: New Orleans As Home by David Rutledge

Finally, the three latest offerings from Archipelago Books, as part of my 2010 subscription:

My Kind of Girl by Buddhadeva Bose
Job by Joseph Roth
Journal of an Ordinary Grief by Mahmoud Darwish

I brought a bunch of books home yesterday. I met up with an LT/book blogger friend and she brought me the following:

The Rebel Princess by Judith Koll Healey
The Edge of Eden by Helen Benedict
The Witch Doctor's Wife by Tamar Myers
Alcestis by Katherine Beutner
The Black Tower by Louis Baynard

Then we went and got a tour at Sourcebooks, and left with:
To Defy a King by Elizabeth Chadwick
For the King's Favor by Elizabeth Chadwick
The Forever Queen by Helen Hollick
I am the Chosen King by Helen Hollick
The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley

Finally I took her to my favorite indie bookstore and I bought:
Girl in a Blue Dress by Gaynor Arnold

Darryl, I am so glad you mentioned Job. It has not been available from BN.COM, and I had given in to the notion that I might have to go exploring for it. But now they show it as becoming available on December 1. I hope to find time today to order it.

Meanwhile I have an order from them that they say they shipped on Monday; the post office says that they received it on Tuesday, the post office says that it got to Puerto Rico on Thursday, and I live far closer to the Pacific than to the Atlantic wondering whether it will ever get here.

Robert

Due to talk on another thread I now own Stitches: a memoir by David Small.

I took a large bag of books over to my family when I visited them, and now have returned home with the bag refilled by both family members and a shopping trip. I brought home:

The Saffron Gate by Linda Holeman
Lethal Intent by Quintin Jardine
All The Colors of Darkness by Peter Robinson
Fresh From The Country by Miss Read
Feed by Mira Grant
Playing With Bones by Kate Ellis
The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
Why Didn't They Ask Evans? by Agatha Christie
At Bertram's Hotel by Agatha Christie
The Chameleon's Shadow by Minette Walters

I'm Readin : hush hush by Becca Fitzpatrick :D

Barny Noble's 15% off the entire transaction drew me into the store yesterday when I was nearby.

Capital, volume 1 by Karl Marx. I think it is important for me to believe that I will read this some day. Today on the same deal I ordered on-line volumes two and three along with a couple of commentaries.

Teh Itteh Bitteh Book of Kittehs by Professor Happycat. Stuff my own stocking.

Ten dollars in gratuitous Borders Bucks drew me into Borders today.

The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas. I didn't want to lay down much cash, and Borders just doesn't have that much on its shelves that I want. This book may, from what I see on LibraryThing, be interesting. With ten per cent off cuzza my AARP card I got change back from a four dollar bill.

Robert

From BookMooch:

Dancers in Mourning by Margery Allingham

From the Library.
White Nights by Ann Cleeves
Homer & Langley by E.L. Doctorow
The Exile by Diana Gabaldon an Outlander Graphic Novel.

A small box from Barny Noble, that traveled via Puerto Rico and took four days to cross from there, was in my mailbox this afternoon.

Existence in Black edited by Lewis R. Gordon. I've wanted this book since I first saw it in a store a few years ago and have only now got it because it was pricy for a paperback. It is about America, a favorite subject of mine. It is about the black experience in America, a serious interest of mine. It is about existentialism, a favorite subject of mine. It would go in the list of 500 or a thousand books that I own that I would like to read right now except I'm reading something else.

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome. Although this book is essential, which I know because it is in the Barnes and Noble Library of Essential Reading, I might not have got it except that a member of our church book group mentioned it in passing in a recent meeting.

The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa. A decade or so ago I read a good bit of Pessoa with a good bit of satisfaction. But I think I did not read this, and this edition has been mentioned favorably here at LibraryThing.

I found today that I have ordered another copy of Capital, volume 1 when I thought I was ordering a copy of Capital, volume 3. It is on its way to me. I will have to work out how I am to trade it in.

Robert

From the public library --

The Axe and the Oath by Robert Fossier
Holiday Grind by Cleo Coyle

I got the same coupon in two different promotional e-mails from Borders. I went there on my way to Jamba Juice for lunch.

The Greek Myths, 1 by Robert Graves. I'll have to get volume 2 with the next coupon.

Robert

The Lizard Cage by Karen Connelly

@ twogerbils:

I plan to check out Holiday Grind from the library myself in a week or so. The Coffeehouse Mysteries are fun, aren't they?

Enjoy!

Given the adventure through Puerto Rico last week of my Barny Noble shipment, I was especially surprised when I opened package tracking this morning to see that my books not only had come to town, to my local post office, but were out for delivery. And there they were this afternoon in my mailbox. All were at an additional 15% discount.

The Education of the Stoic by Fernando Pessoa. More Pessoa; I will be delighted to read him. I wonder whether I will actually get around to it.

Thelonius Monk by Robin D. G. Kelley. Here's a crafter of magic music and a man who could hardly exist in society described about as well as can be according to a lot of people including kidzdoc.

Travelling Heroes by Robin Lane Fox. How did people pay their credit card bills when a trip took two years? How did people get from one side of the forest to the other when there were footpads behind every tree? I hope this book will tell. The author has written at least one other book well.

Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela. There aren't all that many great men and fewer still great good men. I think I had better read this.

Capital, volume 2 by Karl Marx. Because it's there, I guess. Also I suspect I am told a lot of wrong things about it and should look for myself.

Marx's 'Capital' fifth edition by Ben Fine and Alfredo Saad-Filho. I don't think I can understand Marx without help. I just hope that they are not among the one's telling us wrong things.

A Companion to Marx's Capital by David Harvey. See above. Also the back cover promises that it is relevant to today's economic problems. On the author touchstone, this is the "unknown" David Harvey.

There was also a copy of Capital, volume 1 in the box. I must have clicked on it when I thought I was clicking on Capital, volume 3. Now I have to schlep this volume 1 back to the store where I bought my original volume 1 for a refund of the discounted price on the invoice and then on-line order volume 3 for full price. Bah, humbug.

Merry Thanksgiving, everybody,

Robert

Yesterday I came home with a book I've been eyeballing for a while, Common Phrases and the Amazing Stories Behind Them by Max Cryer.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Last week our Library was have a book sale so I checked it out. I bought 4 books for $1. Here are the books I bought:

Mystic River by Dennis Lehane (I realized afterwards that I actually own a copy already.)
Willow by V.C. Andrews
Desperation by Stephen King
The King of Lies by John Hart

My latest batch of books.

Mystery
Sand Sharks by Margaret Maron

Historical Mystery
The Pericles Commission by Gary Corby - Ebook

World Fiction
Love, Anger, Madness by Marie Vieux-Chauvet - Hati

Dark Fantasy
City of Dreams and Nightmare by Ian Whates - Ebook

Servant of the Underworld by Aliette de Bodard

Non-Fiction
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

Yesterday, I made a quick run into Borders with a 40% off coupon to pick up The Greek Myths, volume 2 by Robert Graves completing the set I started last week or so.

Less than an hour later I returned a copy of Capital, volume 1 that I had mistakenly ordered from BN.COM to the store. I came away with The Liberal Imagination by Lionel Trilling and Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay; I have since read the latter.

Robert

Got a lot of books this month:

Last night in Twisted River by John Irving (touchstones, ergh).
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
Amsterdam by Ian McEwan
The Corrections by JOnathan Franzen

From Audible:
Empire Falls by Richard Russo

Library checkout for bookclub:
The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

from work training:
Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson

No way I'm going to finish these before the Christmas bunch comes in.

-52, I loved Eating Animals!

From BookMooch:

Search the Dark by Charles Todd

From Open Letter Series:

The Sixty-Five Years of Washington by Juan Jose Saer

Had Sabrielby Garth Nix when I returned from Thanksgiving. Still waiting on a few more from PBS (it's taking longer than usual for some) to get here. Oh well, I do have some audiobooks to mail on my way to work tomorrow.

From the library today:

Picked up the next two books in An Elizabethan Whodunit series:

The Merry Devils and The Trip to Jerusalem

True Crime: Murder in Hollywood: Solving a Silent Screen Mystery by Charles Higham.

My "blind choice": The Circus of Dr. Lao by Charles G. Finney.

and two Bios: Martha Matilda Harper and the American Dream and Mabel: a Biography of Mabel Dodge Luhan.

I was bad at Target--I got Rescue by Anita Shreve and I Still Dream of You by Fannie Flagg. Also got my Early Reviewer book Undressing The Moon.

From Audible.com:

Port Mortuary by Patricia Cornwell
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand
Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff

I am currently finishing Breaking Night. Next up: The Reader and Oogy.