Books Brought Home -- December 2010

Shadowheart by Tad Williams.

L'ange Aux Deux Visages by Nicola Upson

These books came up in a discussion the other day. I know I have them already, but I don't know where, so I picked them up again at Barny Noble's yesterday.

The Federalist Papers edited by Clinton Rossiter
The Anti-Federalist Papers edited by Ralph Ketcham

Robert

I received my November ER book the other day

Deeper Than the Dead by Tami Hoag

Last night I stopped at Borders and bought The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddharta Mukherjee, which was selected as one of the New York Times' 10 Best Books of 2010.

Received Stardust by Neil Gaiman through PBS today. A friend made me watch the movie, and I loved it! So of course I had to find the book.

From PBS: Person or Persons Unknown by Bruce Alexander.

From the Library Book Sale.

Memoir from Antproof Case by Mark Helprin
The devil and Miss Pryn by Paulo Coelho
The Winner Stands Alone by Paulo Coehlo
Arctic Chill by Arnaldur Indridason
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
An Uncommon Scold arranged by Abby Adams
How to Buy a Love of reading by Tanya Egan Gibson

Ghostlines by Nick Gadd

I was very fortunate to receive a bonus at work on Friday and after making charitable donations in the names of each of my bosses used a bit of it for me:

The King's Speech: How One Man Saved the British Monarchy by Mark Logue
The Unbroken by Lauren Hillenbrand
Agnes Gray

Using my new kindle to read The Rescue by Joseph Conrad which I was able to download (free) at http://manybooks.net. The setting is similar to where I live in the Philippines which makes the novel even more enjoyable.

Have now finished The Rescue what a great book - not at all one of Conrad's lesser works I think. It ranks, in my opinion, third only to Lord Jim and Victory.
Am now reading Kafka's The Metamorphis another free book for kindle from http://manybooks.net.
What a glorious age we live in to be able to obtain great books at no cost. Almost makes getting old worth it.

Received a partial order in the mail today:

Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey
Blow Your House Down by Pat Barker
Liar by Jan Burke
House to House by David Bellavia

I preordered three books from BN.COM. Late on December 1, the date the last was to be published, I got three e-mails saying that each book was delayed. Then I saw this one on the shelf at a local brick and mortar; I got an e-mail saying they had shipped it, but the post office didn't get it until the next day. The post office in its own turn kept promising delivery yesterday; it even got to the local post office yesterday morning. It wasn't in my mailbox last night; it was today.

Bah, humbug.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson. I put this book on my waiting-for-the-paperback wishlist when I first saw it mentioned on LibraryThing. Since then favorable mention has been much reinforced. The story has struck me as one that could appeal to me as a romantic old man. I will put it before my book club in hopes that they will get me to read it.

Robert

Judgement Day by Wanda l. Dyson, an Early Reviewers book, arrived today.
Dead Tomorrow by Peter James.

Stephen J. Cannell's At First Sight: A Novel of Obsession. I have enjoyed Cannell in the past but this one is plodding - have no interest in the protagonist, Chick Best. (Another amazon.com e-book) Cannell is an awful contrast to Kafka and Conrad whom I have just read.

Got The Dragon and the Unicorn and Holder of Lightning from PBS day before yesterday.

And I got my ER copy of The Emperor's Body when I checked the mailbox this morning. Now I have 3 books to review over the next couple weeks!

Just received in the mail a member giveaway book, Attack in the Alleghenies by William P. Robertson. Nice of the author to mail out the book - I'll begin to read it this afternoon since I have finished Stephen J. Cannell's book.

Arrived in the mail today - The Bards of Bone Plain by Patricia A. McKillip and The Painted Boy by Charles de Lint.

Finished and reviewed Attack in the Alleghenies. Reading again The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers. Another Project Gutenberg e-book from manybooks.net.

Well, well, well. After seeing all the heavy reading going on here, I'm almost tempted to refrain from listing what I got in the mail today:

Pretty Plus: How to Look Sexy, Sensational and Successful No Matter What You Weigh by Babe Hope

I'm on a mission to find help style information for women of size.

Other books I got this month are:

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson
How to Never Look Fat Again by Charla Krupp
The Gospel According to Coco Chanel by Karen Karbo

Plus a slew of magazines: People Style Watch, Real Simple, Storage, and Glamour (because it had Reese Witherspoon on the cover, OK?)

I already read The Gospel According to Coco Chanel but I have to catch up on my book listings and reviews.

From Open Letter Series:

Zone by Mathias Enard

Bone Worship by Elizabeth Eslami
Affinity by Sarah Waters
Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun (wanted to read after reading about it in My Reading Life by Pat Conroy, a November read)
The Distant Hours by Kate Morton

From the library: Post Mortuary by Patricia Cornwell

Hmm . . . do my niece and nephew Christmas orders like Fuzzy Bee and Friends count??? I did read it, because it's a sin to order a book and leave it unread . . . I refrained from chewing on it, though; I'll leave that up to my nephew.

Journey's end ,for me, it's proving to be quite good

I also got How to talk like a local out of the library and it's really interesting and entertaing. It's a guide of all the (British) local words you wouldn't find in a normal dictionary for example a 'dardledumdue' means day-dreamer in East Anglia

Matched by Ally Condie
Manga:
Black Butler 1, Pandora Hearts 1, Arata 1(Yesterday)
Fushigi Yugi 1, Fushigi Yugi 2, Fushigi Yugi 4, Alice 19th 1, Ceres 3, Tsubasa 1, Full Moon 4, Inu Yasha 1, Inu Yasha 2(Today)

I am new to this so here it goes. 184944::God's Bestseller -William Tyndale, Thomas More, and the Writing of the English Bible - A Story of Martyrdom and Betrayal by Brian Moynahan. For The Glory of God --How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery by Rodney Stark And finally, The New Hendrickson Parallel Bible - KJV, NIV, NKJV and NLT 2nd ed. All from public library.

Two BookMooch books arrived, 1 from Israel and 1 from Oregon!

Ruth: A Portrait by Patricia Cornwell
Mourning Ruby by Helen Dunmore

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott

From Friends of the Library:

Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer
The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit

From B&N:

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
Agnes Grey
Revolution

Here's everything that came into my house over the last week.

I also had a couple of books from earlier this month, but they are not pictured here.

Edit: next time I'm not using the bookshelf light when I take a picture. Ugh.

Oh, I like the picture.

Ditto.

40% coupon from Borders got me Set Theory and the Continuum Problem by Raymond Smullyan and Melvin Fitting. I like sets and infinity.

When I got home there was a copy of Job by Joseph Roth from Barny Noble in my mailbox. LibraryThing tells me that I already have it in a different edition. That's news to me; I thought I had only one Roth novel, The Radetsky March. Oh well, I will love it, at least until I read it.

There's another package in town for me from Barny Noble, but the post office didn't feel like delivering it.

Robert

More deliveries from PBS :)

The Oyster Volumes III and IV
The Butcher and Other Erotica by Alina Reyes

And on the tamer side
Ithaka by Adele Geras
Queen of the South by Arturo Perez-Reverte

In the mail from Barny Noble:

Historical Romances by Mark Twain. I bought this to have Joan of Arc. The price of this volume was not ridiculously higher than the price of that work by itself.

Capital, volume 3 by Karl Marx. This completed my set of Capital. Now I have to find the motivation to read it.

American Liberalism by John McGowan (1). This book was mentioned favorably somewhere around here. It is too expensive for such a thin book.

The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom. A recent mention in one of the threads here made this sound both inspirational and informative. I wonder how ordinary folk manage in extreme times.

The Federalist edited by George W. Carey and Jame McClellan. A second edition in my library for the discussion in the The Federalist Papers group.

And they tell me they've finally shipped a book scheduled for publishing on December 1.

Robert

I just finished Show No Fear by Perri O'Shaughnessy which arrived from Chapters on Monday.

From Audible:

Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
On The Road by Jack Kerouac
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

I have brought home way to many books this month:
Mordsweihnachten
Mörderische Weihnachten
Skipping Christmas
The Journals of Eleanor Druise
well not soo many actually...

I have brought home way to many books this month:
Mordsweihnachten
Mörderische Weihnachten
Skipping Christmas
The Journals of Eleanor Druse
Bridget Jones's Diary
The Three Musketeers
well not soo many actually...

there is definitely something not working with the touchstones!

For Skipping Christmas and The Journals of Eleanor Druse try reopening message 39 and resubmitting it. Sometimes it can even take doing that a few times. I haven't played with the others, but 'Bridgeht' may be a misspelling.

Good luck,

Robert

More books arrived from my last order, just a couple more to come.

Shadow Patriots by Lucia St Clair Robson
The Western Trail by Ralph Compton
I, Sniper by Stephen Hunter
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
The Book of Eleanor by Pamela Kaufman

A couple of the above are for tucking into my husband's stocking, the rest are for greedy ole me!

Many from Bookmooch the last few weeks, including:

Horns by Joe Hill
Warbreakerby Brandon Sanderson
Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
Star of the Sea by Joseph O'connor
Emissaries from the Dead by Adam-Troy Castro
The Last Colony by John Scalzi
Worlds by Joe Haldeman
Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart
Hide and Seek by Ian Rankin

Not too literary perhaps but what's been coming up from my wishlist. Getting a book almost everyday in the mail. Happy dance!

ETA: best touchstones ever!

I just brought home my new library book club book Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

The last from an order of books released November 30 and December 1 was in the mail from Barny Noble today.

First Peoples in a New World by David J. Meltzer. The subtitle is "colonizing ice age America" and presumably the book is about that.

Robert

Just downloaded The Boy Spy by Joseph Kerbey. Finished and reviewed Christopher C. Payne's
JournalStone's 2010 Warped Words, for Twisted Minds, a member-giveaway which gave a fair look at some up-and-coming writers of horror short stories.

On Thursday I had lunch with an old friend in NYC, and before I met her I made a quick trip to Book Culture, a wonderful independent bookstore affiliated with and close to Columbia University, to buy Above All, Don't Look Back by Maïssa Bey, a novel which was longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize that I'll review for an upcoming issue of Belletrista. It's about a young woman whose home town in Algeria has been decimated by a major earthquake, who must reevaluate herself, her family and culture in the wake of this disaster.

This was my second trip to Book Culture last week; on Monday I picked up 10 more books:

Sozaboy by Ken Saro-Wiwa: A novel about a young soldier in the Nigerian Civil War that has been on my wish list for a couple of years. Saro-Wiwa may be familiar to some of you, as he was a human rights activist who was famously imprisoned and executed by the military regime of Sani Abacha in 1995.

The Tenant and The Motive by Javier Cercas: Two 'darkly humorous' novellas by a Spanish author that I had not heard of, which was on one of the sale tables.

Blind Man With a Pistol by Chester Himes: A mystery by an African-American writer that I've been meaning to read for some time, which features the irresistible pair of Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones as they attempt to solve a series of crimes in a sweltering Harlem summer. (Hmm, I need an exciting nickname like Coffin or Grave Digger; must work on this.)

The Ark Sakura by Kobo Abe: A novel about 'isolation and the threat of a nuclear holocaust', which I'll read in 2011 if Abe is chosen as a mini-author for next year's Author Theme Reads group.

A Season in the Congo by Aimé Césaire: I haven't read anything by this famed author from Martinique, and this play about the life and tragic death of Patrice Lumumba will be one of the books I'll read for the Reading Globally quarterly theme on Wars & Regions in Conflict that I and arubabookwoman will be leading.

Who Killed Palomino Molero? by Mario Vargas Llosa: MVL will be the main author of the 2011 Author Theme Reads group, so I'll read this sometime next year.

What Was African American Literature? by Kenneth W. Warren: When I saw this book, I (of course) said, "Was?" The author defines African American literature for the purpose of this book as works that were written 'within and against the strictures of Jim Crow America', and his focus is on what this literature meant during and after that time (the first two thirds of the 20th century), and how AfrAm literature has evolved in the post-civil rights movement era.

Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon: This year's winner of the National Book Award for Fiction, which I'll read for a 11 in 11 challenge next year (classic American fiction and American literary award winners).

Friction by Eloy Urroz: A comic novel by one of the leading young Latin American novelists, which is his first novel to be translated into English by Dalkey Archive Press.

One With Others by C.D. Wright: A collection that was a finalist for this year's National Book Award for Poetry, which is based on an 'explosive incident' in Arkansas during the Civil Rights Movement.

Yesterday I had to go to urgent care, and was given an appointment for two hours later. I was pretty sure I'd be in for a painful procedure as well. So, to pass the time and to console myself, naturally, I stopped by the library booksale.

I only picked up two books, even though everything was half off! I'm proud of myself for my restraint!

I came away with:

The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig...(A hardcover edition in excellent shape!)

and

Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Capetown by Paul Theroux

and, yes, the books were a definite consolation! :-)

ETA:

We forgot to check the mail yesterday, due to everything that was going on, and opened the mailbox this morning to discover an AR copy of Reading Women: How the Great Books of Feminism Changed My Life by Stephanie Staal, which I actually won from Goodreads! (First book ever won either from LT or GR!) Woohoo! I'm so looking forward to this, as it seems perfectly up my alley! That sure got my day off to a great start!

From Audible:
The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov by Vladimir Nabokov

From QPBC:
Private Life by Jane Smiley
The Map of True Places by Brunonia Barry
A Thousand Cuts by Simon Lelic
I Thought You Were Dead by Pete Nelson
War by Sebastian Junger

I just picked up a book from the library that not any other LTer has Steig Larsson Our Days in Stockholm.
A memoir of a friendship by Kurdo Baksi. It isn't a very big book, could be read in one sitting. I am Really curious.

BookMooch arrivals, one from Georgia and the other from California:

In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje
The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney

I picked up Major Pettigrew's last stand On Saturday at a newly discovered book store in my neighborhood

I received Sins in the Second City through PBS today, and while I was at BAM getting an audiobook for my mom for Christmas I also raided the clearance shelves.

Grave Goods by Arianna Franklin. Third in the Mistress of the Art of Death series so I needed it.
Also picked up Scarlett by Alexandra Ripley - this is the sequel to Gone with the Wind and I've tried to read it before and couldn't do it. I'm quite loyal to Margaret Mitchell so I don't have high hopes. Sorry for the wrong touchstone :(

In today's mail from two different orders from Barny Noble:

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. This is the Norton Critical Edition. The 75 book challenge is doing Austen this year, and I thought I ought finally to get off my hands and do my reading. I also wanted to participate, so I needed the critical apparatus too.

The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man by Henri Frankfort, H.A. Frankfort, John A. Wilson (probably 1), Thorkild Jacobsen, and William A. Irwin. This is an older text. Although the history hasn't changed, the historiography probably has. Nevertheless this was recommended somewhere along the line and should be good enough for the background reading I need.

Merry Christmas,

Robert

Have a lot of books to list. A few November Books that became December books, and then the books I got in December.

Fantasy:
Vampire Uprising by Marcus Pelegrimas
Blood Prophecy by Stefan Petrucha
Thicker Than Water by Mike Carey
The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia
The House of Discarded Dreams by Ekaterina Sedia
The Bastard Queen by Elaine Isaak
The Iron Khan by Liz Williams (ebook)
Right Hand Magic by Nancy Collins


SF:
Destroyer of Worlds by Larry Niven
Time Travelers Never Die by Jack McDevitt
Pirate Sun by Karl Schroeder
The Waters Rising by Sheri Tepper (ebook)

Horror:
Live Free or Undead Edited by Rick Broussard (Short Stories, set in NH)

Historical Fiction:
Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier
No Roads Lead to Rome by R.S. Gompertz (ebook)
Quest for Honour by Sam Barone (was first published as Conflict of Empires) (ebook)
The Pict by Jack Dixon (ebook)
The Sound of Building Coffins by Louis Maistros (ebook)

Mystery:
Serpent in the Thorns by Jeri Westerson, Medieval Noir, (ebook)
Roman Games by Bruce Macbain (ebook)

Fiction:
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson (ebook)
Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes (ebook)

I got books for Christmas!!!!
Yippee!!
Beauty and the Beast by Robert Sabuda
Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
The Eustace Diamonds
The Duke's Children
Phineas Finn
Phineas Redux

And, I got a Nook!

Congrats on getting a Nook jmaloney17!!

Merry Christmas everyone. I actually received a book for Christmas from my daughter. She said she actually had this book from the time it was released and I am so thrilled that I did not decide to purchase this book a few weeks ago.

The book I received was:

Me by Ricky Martin

I hope to read this in 2011.

I received four books from my best friends for Christmas:

The Memory Chalet by Tony Judt
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick
Captain Pantoja and the Special Service by Mario Vargas Llosa.

Christmas Presents.

!000 Artists Journal Pages by Dawn DeVries Sokol

Christmas presents:

Tinkers by Paul Harding
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
Forgetfulness by Ward Just
Stories Done: Writings on the 1960s and Its Discontents by Mikal Gilmore
To The End Of The Land by David Grossman

From BookMooch:

The Crimson Petal And The White by Michael Faber

From B&N for LT Author Theme Read 2011: all by Mario Vargas Llosa
The Green House
Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter
Conversation in the Cathedral

and

10219401::The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

jmaloney17 - I got a nook too! So excited!

No books for Christmas, unless you count the two I got myself as soon as my nook was charged:
The Hunger Games
Darkness Falling by David Niall Wilson - touchstone is wrong

But I did also get a Barney Noble gift card so I'll probably have some more books before the new year.

Is that how you spell Barney? I think I've been spelling it Barny.

Robert

#62
I had a lot of problems with the B&N website Sat. and Sun. It was taking about 20 minutes to load a page. I have very fast internet service, so I thought it was on the B&N side. I was able to download one book, but I had to do it on my computer and not on the Nook. I plan to try again tonight.

Free eBook
The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope

Currently reading The Beekeepers apprentice and The Hangman's Daughter both of which I am enjoying whenever I pick up one or the other. Almost done with The Beekeepers apprentice because I am carrying it around in my bag and have much more opportunity to read it so far. I love seeing a young lady be equal with the great Sherlock Holmes, it is refreshing. They also have a fun relationship which I think is more enjoyable than the holmes-watson one, because she stands up to him.

Anyway, off to read and sleep and do all those important holiday tasks (more eating, more reading, more sleeping)

Just got another eBook for my Nook. (That rhymes, *giggle*)

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis I must read it before Blackout, which I already own.

In the mail from two Barny Noble orders:

The Tempest by William Shakespeare. Last week I saw the recent film The Tempest with Helen Mirren as Prospera. Liberties were taken with the script, but it had been awhile since I had actually read it. I thought I had better go back to it and also look into it, so I got this Norton Critical Edition. A lot of people liked the movie a lot more than I did, and I thought that it at least bore watching.

The Robbers and Wallenstein by Friedrich Schiller. Le Salon... is going to read this as a group read sometime soon. I have recently read Schiller's Don Carlos and respected it enough to have a look at this one too. The author page says that his name is Friedrich von Schiller; I believe that the von is not correct.

The Cambridge Companion to The Talmud and Rabbinic Literature edited by Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert and Martin S. Jaffee. Jacob Neusner has written an Introduction to Rabbinic Literature which carries a lot of authority but the prose of which is so dense I haven't picked it up again after my first few hours struggling with it (and I'm tempted to buy his Talmud). Anyway, where did this modern Jewish religion come from? I am curious about that question and hope that this book will help bring understanding and be readable.

I also got a boxed set of eleven Columbia Pictures films which I'll have to go catalog on Take 11.

Robert

Mr. Durick: Thanks for the link to Take 11. It looks like a good site for DVD cataloging. I had yet to find one that I liked.

#66 - why must you read To Say Nothing of the Dog first? I was told that Blackout is the beginning of a new series (though they have some commonalities re time travel). Was I misinformed?

#70 I don't think that you have to read it first. But saying that, Blackout and All Clear both involve the Oxford time-travelling group. I do think you have to read Blackout before All Clear though. Evidently, Blackout ends with a cliffhanger.

Picked up a couple more ebooks, $5 each at Borders.
A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin
The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

From BookMooch:

Night Train to Lisbon by Night Train to Lisbon

Loaded King James version of Bible into my kindle - really enjoy the search function - and the big print options on kindle. Although I miss the heft and smell of the "real thing," I continue to be enamored of the kindle.

Loved The Hunger Games so I'm now getting the next two books:
Catching Fire
Mockingjay

I love reading on my nook! Even more than I thought I would :)

Igraine the Brave by Cornelia Funke
Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
Dragon Rider by Cornelia Funke
Inkspell by Cornelia Funke
The Dark Planet by Patrick Carman
Puddlejumpers by Mark Jean and Christopher C.Carlson
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
The Midwife's Apprentice by Karen Cushman
The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
The Watson's Go to Birmingham --1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis
The Dark Hills Divide by Patrick Carman
Beyond the Valley of Thorns by Patrick Carman
How to Twist a Dragon's Tale by Cressida Cowell
The City of Embers by Jeanne DuPrau
kira-kira by Cynthia Kadohata
The Frog Princess by E. D. Baker
Dragon's Breath by E.D. Baker
Once Upon a Curse by E. D. Baker
No Place for Magic by E. D. Baker
Gideon the Cutpurse by Linda Buckley-Archer
Beastly by Alex Flinn
Reckless by Cornelia Funke

All except the last two were bought at one time from my favorite used book store for only about $30 total.

Books I got for Christmas:
In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson
Dissolution by C.J. Sansom
Dark fire by C.J. Sansom
Blind Eye by Stuart MacBride
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
plus a Norwegian humour book about football and one about local history. Very happy with all those, I needed to fill up my "to read" pile.

Bought for myself
Where Memories Lie by Deborah Crombie
Kissed a Sad Goodbye by Deborah Crombie

Got some more eBooks.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
and the 11 sequels that go with it.

Well last night I received a borders gift card and today I spent it along with my 25 dollars in borders bucks (surprise for me because I thought I only had $15.) So I had a total of $45 to spend and still came out with .24 cents change on my gift card. Here are the books I purchased:

The Watchmen by Alan Moore (I will be reading this starting tonight)
Angus, thongs and full-frontal snogging by Louise Rennison (just looks like a very funny and entertaining book)
Pretty Little Liars by Sara Shepard
Flawless by Sara Shepard

I have never seen the show Pretty Little Liars but the books looked interesting. Now tomorrow I will be going back to buy some more books.

Happy New Year!!!

Bought What the dickens by Gregory Maguire author of Wicked Wed night. Finished yesterday...I haven't read Wicked yet....now I have to!

Have downloaded Thom Hartmann's Unequal Protection and am fairly well into it.