Fill Your Shelves in February: What new books found you?

I just received the two sequels to Across the Nightingale Floor which are Grass for His Pillow and Brilliance of the Moon. As I did not sleep all that well last night, I am going to bed early with the book 2 of the series! I am excited. I wonder how long I'll stay awake?

Graceling should be arriving on my doorstep in five days.

I got Heartless the other day, and already finished it. I love the Parasol Protectorate series! So much fun! I've already ordered the next (and apparently last) book in the series Timeless.

Just added a couple to the tbr shelves:

A Drink Before the War by Dennis Lehane (First in the Kenzie and Gennaro series)
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

Company of Ghosts by Steven Hunt (no touchstone)
Crystal Rain Tobias Bucknell
This is Not a Game - Walter Jon Williams'
The Eagle in the Ninth - Rosemary Sutcliff

As explained over on the other thread, I received hundreds of books for my Kindle from a friend. I've read over half of them, but it's still an amazing haul. I will have to rearrange my spending habits and/or send money in tip jar form to some of the authors.

It includes all the Iain Banks Culture series, which I may give another try to. Sometimes, if the book is free I'm a little more forgiving.

Cory Doctorow's For the win is on its way to me :)

#6 - I know how you feel. I also had a gift from a friend. I use them because I know if I find an author I like I will buy their books, because ereader isn't my favorite format. Also, I would only ever buy an untried author in a used bookstore. Friends are wonderful.

#6 - You might want to try Inversions (of the Culture series).
Reads more like fantasy than sf... (and if I say more I'm going to spoil it, so I don't).

I periodically get ebooks from 'questionable' sources. When I do so it is because either I cannot buy the damn thing in ebook format because of asinine regional locking, or the book is too old to be available in ebook format. In most cases with the latter, I've already bought the actual book.

I feel little guilt in either case. Yes, I'm a bad person.

#9 Does it matter whether you read them in order?

OH, btw, in that haul of ebooks, if the books are in a series, it gives you the number. Saves me a trip to the internet to figure out which one to read first. It also has all the Patrick O'Brien Aubrey/Maturin books, which I own, but would love to reread on the Kindle instead.

Picked up maybe 15 books over the last week from thrift stores. Also treated myself to a copy of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, since I've been eyeing it for months now. :)

Picked up a copy of After the Golden Age by Carrie Vaughn - haven't read it yet, but looking forward to it.

I have three en route:

Payment Deferred : He Committed the Perfect Crime
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion: A New Abridgement...
A Short History of Nearly Everything: Special Illustrated Edition

All three orders were the result of things I read here on LT.

I've been trying hard to use the library more, but, well, I did clear four books of my shelves last month.

#11 - No, it's not actually a series; it's more like stories set in the same universe but sometimes it is 1000 years or more between them, and very few characters appear in more than one book.
I would advice reading Use of Weapons before Surface Detail, though.

And in Inversions there are some small details that act as kind of clues that you can only get if you have read at least one other Culture novel (which doesn't matter) but I think the book stands well on it's own.
With Surface Detail, on the other hand, the ending makes no sense if you haven't first read Use of Weapons. IMHO.

My copy of Goliath was the parcel I picked up from the post office this morning.

I'm excited to start it! (And to finish it!)

Got a copy of The Bards of Bone Plain by Patricia McKillip on the sale table at Chapters yesterday.

Oh, and Northernstar? You'll like After the Golden Age - I did :)

Yesterday I received a copy of A Christian Manifesto by Francis A. Schaeffer that I'd ordered. I also went to a friends of the library book sale (drool, drool) after work last night, and came home with the following:

Little Pictures of Japan
America by Alistair Cooke (I've wanted that one for a long time!)
When Christ and His Saints Slept and Devil's Brood by Sharon Kay Penman
A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond (never read that one!)
Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank
El Blanco by Rutherford Montgomery
The Moffats and Ginger Pye by Eleanor Estes
Man O' War by Walter Farley
Green Grass of Wyoming by Mary O'Hara (third book in the My Friend Flicka series)
Arrows of the Queen by Mercedes Lackey
When We Were Very Young, Winnie-the-Pooh and Now We Are Six by A.A. Milne
On the Case With Lord Peter Wimsey by Dorothy Sayers (Strong Poison, Have His Carcase and Unnatural Death in one volume)
Welsh Legendary Tales by Elisabeth Sheppard-Jones
The New Testament in Four Versions compiled by Christianity Today

I also picked up a copy of The Magnificent Century by Thomas Costain, forgetting that I already had it! Anyone want it?

Alas, Babylon! There's a blast from the past. :)

#16 Thanks!

Long ago (1950s) and far away (Billings, Montana), I devoured the Moffat books. I loved them! I still remember Rufus laboriously practicing writing his name so he could get a library card.

>19 fuzzi:: Wow, fuzzi, that's a list of impressive length and breadth. Have you been clearing space on your bookshelves?

My latest haul:

The Man Who Deciphered Linear B
National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds
Corsair: Blades of the Moonsea
Mr. Baggins
Return to Bag-End
The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion
Lost Languages
Cards on the Table
The Zombie Combat Manual
The Formation of Christendom
Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations
The Dawn Country
Oh My Gods: A Modern Retelling of Greek and Roman Myths

At a thrift store Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, a short story collection by Haruki Murakami.

And by paperbackswap.com, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, classic horror by Shirley Jackson and The Facts of Life, a ghost story by Graham Joyce.

I am going to have to find a new place for my manicures. Being next door to the Barnes and Noble is a dangerous place for me.

I bought the prequel to the Tales of Otori trilogy Heaven's Net is Wide and the "last tale of the Otori" (a follow-up to the trilogy) The Harsh Cry of the Heron. Rubinstein truly loved writing about Japanese history and culture and her books are full of details and fascinating secondary characters!

I am doing a Year of the Dragon challenge in the Year of the Book community I started where the goal is to read at least one book every month with the year's animal having something to do with it. Easier for dragons to have major character roles than monkeys or roosters, but the book doesn't have to have them as a character, could be about a stature, stuffed animal, pet, etc. If the main character has a pet rabbit, that counts as year of the rabbit, etc.

As a result of this, I'm getting to read a lot of the things off my Dragon shelf that I would have set aside in order to read other things. I'm also getting some new books because I don't have 12 Dragon books that I haven't read yet. So far I've gone through One Wizard Place which wasn't so great, but I liked the dragon, even if everyone needed a little more writing to make them a little more "real", you know what I mean? I also got (and just finished) Where the Mountain Meets the Moon. This was an awesome book, perfect for a Chinese New Year read. It would have taken me years to get to this book if it hadn't been for the Year of the Book.

The dragons in my head have the best ideas. ;)

#27 Not sure when the Year of the Rabbit comes round again, but when it does you may wish to look out African folk tales about Kalulu the Rabbit. He's a common protagonist in Central and East Africa, and said to be an ancestor of Brer Rabbit. Geraldine Elliot collected four volumes' worth (at least) in Malawi in the 1950s; some will include monkeys and roosters as well.

(23) Meredy, I'm wondering where these books are going to go...

...gotta do some 'rearranging'. I might even cull some of the books I bought 3 years ago prior to my surgery, that I've never read and probably will not read (some Tom Clancy's, etc.).

Oh, if my dh were only a carpenter...I'd have bookshelves everywhere!

#28: The year of the rabbit just finished... so you'll have to wait 12 years.

The cloud roads and The serpent sea by Martha Wells found their way to me, with some help from amazon. I have to comment on the cover art for these books - it is sensational and really gives the disorienting feel of being in flight with the character depicted.

Raising the stones and Gridlinked found their way to me via Bookmooch. Was surprised the mailperson came today as the smaller roads are still covered in snow.

28> Yes, the year of the rabbit is a long way from now, 2023, but I will try and remember. ;) I actually can't wait to get into the harder years because it means I'll be reading books that I never would have thought to look at before.

I'm actually quite jazzed over a new cookbook Twelve Months of Monastery Soups that arrived today. So many new things to try!

Also in that package: The Forbidden Zone which was written by a British woman doing nursing duty during World War I. I chose that because it fits in with Downton Abbey. (Or rather it's to be an antidote to the sometimes-less-than-historically-sound DA)

Finally, there's a book that looks a little denser than I'd thought it would be, Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life

I'm pleased with this lot, I must say.

11/22/63 has just arrived, on the heels of the three I listed above (post 15). I can't possibly complain of being out of fresh reading matter anytime soon.

Meredy,

I'm half way through 11/22/63 right now; it's amazing.

Found Room at a thrift store and I've heard so much buzz about it.

I also got The Gunslinger which I read years and years ago; I think I'll be more into it now.

Well, they're not exactly new, but I picked up the following yesterday:

Newman's Guide to a Good Life
Golden Mare by William Corbin
Spytime by William F. Buckley Jr.

I have not read anything by the authors of these books, so I'm not sure how I will like them.

So far I've only gotten one book this month (and it was an ER ebook), but I keep thinking about going to some used bookstores. I have this long list of out-of-print books that I like to look for every once in a while...

So I had to sit in the waiting room at the nursing home where Dad is.....just sitting there minding my own business for a half hour. Not my fault that the waiting area is also the 'take what you want, leave what you want' library area.

Two books jumped in the car and followed me home. So now I have added Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken and a novel by a local author, Gladys Smith, called Deliverance Valley.

streamsong, I hope you enjoy Hillenbrand's book. It is a remarkable story and I really was glad I read it!

#32 - Gridlinked was my first Neal Asher and I liked it a lot.
I wonder how it stands up today, perhaps it's time to check back on the Cormac stories...

(39) I've heard about those "jumping books". The cancer center next to where I work has bookshelves full of that type of active tomes.... ;)

I did it again...I went to abebooks.com, and discovered that a bunch of books on my wish list were available not only on sale (one was $1.00), but that shipping charges were waived!

::hangs head::

Angel with the Sword: Merovingen Nights, Book 1
Visible Light
The Paladin
Serpent's Reach
Cyteen III: The Vindication
all by CJ Cherryh

and

Falls the Shadow by Sharon Kay Penman

Just had an order from QPB.com shipped:
A. Lincoln
Mr. Peanut
The Gates
A Thousand Cuts
Blacklands
The Children's Book

...and...
bought a copy of The Gulag Archipelago from the library.
I think with those and the ones I already own, I'm set for the next couple years.
Of course, that doesn't mean I won't be picking up more. I can never have enough books. :)

I stopped by the library on the way home tonight (like I don't have enough books to read as it is????) and they had a copy of At Wit's End for sale.

One more to add to the ever growing pile/stack/mountain of books...

So I picked up Cinder by Marissa Meyer to pass the time while waiting for some friends (meeting at a bookstore is always dangerous!) and I could barely put it down when they arrived, so I bought it.

Also, I stopped at a big used bookstore on the way home:

Tris's Book and Sandry's Book by Tamora Pierce
Her Emelan books aren't my favorite, but I like to read them from time to time.

The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany
I've only been looking for this since I joined LT practically. I stumbled across it looking for another author (see below).

Beauty by Robin McKinley
I have a copy of this somewhere, I just don't know where.

The Cat Who Smelled a Rat by Lilian Jackson Braun
Trying for the complete set. I got most of them from my grandmother, but somehow a few went astray.

Space Cops: Mindblast and Seaquest DSV: The Novel by Diane Duane and Peter Morewood
I wasn't looking for these books specifically, but I sort of collect stuff by Diane Duane. I'll definitely read the Seaquest novel at some point (oh, nostalgia!). I don't actually know what Space Cops is.

I also bought a book that I think is a duplicate but I'm not sure yet, and a dvd I've been wanting for a while. It's a good thing I don't stop at that store very often, really...

Managed to pick up a copy of The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales as well as Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things from the charity shop. The next book in Charlie Huston's Joe Pitt series also arrived, Half the Blood of Brooklyn.

In another trip to the library, I found
Angkor: An Essay on Art and Imperialism,
Occultism, Witchcraft, and Cultural Fashions,
and Ancient Architecture.

Well, one of the books I got last weekend was mangled by some idiot trying to make a hollow book (out of a paperback??). Bah.

I went to another used bookstore today and got a second copy of Searching For Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede (mine is falling apart) and Wings of Omen, which contains a story by Diane Duane, among other interesting authors.

So far, I've read only 2 books in February, but purchased 8. That's not good for a guy trying to cut down on his TBR pile!

Conspiracies, All the Rage, and By the Sword by F. Paul Wilson
The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds
Dhalgren, Nova, and Triton (boxed set) by Samuel R. Delany
and Caldé of the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe

I just ordered Immortal Milk: Adventures in Cheese... my plan is to finish my dissertation until it arrives (in about 6 weeks)

I just returned from a detour to the bookshop, adding Inside Apple to the To Read heap... with the disclaimer that it won't stay there for long, because it's meant to be read, now ;-)

In my job I need to understand and work with many different corporate and management cultures (which makes my foundation in political sciences, economic history and history of ideas make total sense) and Apple is an interesting case study when looking at patterns...

(51) my problem too, saltmanz...more incoming that reading seems to increase that TBR pile!

No additions today, but I'm expecting a shipment of 6 more books, soon.

A kind friend from Kew has enriched my bookshelf with a copy of Joseph Hooker; botanical trailblazer -- touchstone not working, a book arising from a recent exhibition held to mark the centenary of the death of their second Director.

A shipment of 2 books is due soon.

Despite very muc liking the ereader I hate ebook shopping, but have devoted a few hours to it this afternoon, and hence won't have to do so for a few months! a mixed bag:

desolation road IM's (last) chance to see if he's as good as everyone says
ready player one - when is the Green Dragon group read for this?
a Stuart Macbride and the first three rebecca Tope mysteries
a glen cook compilation from Baen, along with a larry niven one - this one mostly for gripping hand but some others look good too.
two books from linda nagata who was an intruiging ER author

umm
I think that was it, but a few more may have crept in around the edges. Usual mix of crime SF and fantasy.

More arrivals for me this weekend:

Carlucci 3 in 1 by Richard Paul Russo
Dr. Yes by Colin Bateman
The Helmet of Horror by Victor Pelevin
True Grit by Charles Portis
Stories edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio

The last 4 were picked up brand new for a princely sum of £9 from Fopp

We just had a very late Christmas with my parents (who live in California) and my sister (who lives in Jerusalem) and came away a ton of books! My dad gave my wife the entire Children of the Lion series (19 books!) and also passed on his copies of The Road and Worth Dying For to me (he doesn't reread books, so I get lots of hand-me-downs from him when he's done with them.)

But beyond that, I got a Kindle Touch from my parents. Ebooks will never replace "real" books for me, but this thing is pretty sweet, and I've already downloaded half a dozen free books onto the thing, including Steven Erikson's When She's Gone, which I'm currently reading, as well as Bright of the Sky and Travellers' Rest. As if I needed an excuse to accumulate more books—even non-tangible ones!

The Phonetic Description of Voice Quality and The Last Airbender The Promise vol 1 turned up in the mail last night. An odd combination, but suitable enough for me.

I got a parcel of books in the mail today - made the rest of a not-great day much better! The latest Elizabeth Moon, Kings of the North, two Patricia Briggs I didn't have yet (of the Mercy Thompson series), and two geological/historical books that both look very interesting: The Map that Changed the World and The Fossil Hunter. Lots of lovely reading ahead! I'm particularly looking forward to The Fossil Hunter - it's about Mary Anning, a fossil collector in Lyme Regis in the early 1800's who discovered some of the first and best ichthyosaur and plesiosaur fossils. I love fossils, and since I was involved in finding some (one of our discoveries is now in the Royal Tyrrell Museum), I'm especially fond of ichthyosaurs. There is also a pretty good fictional book about Mary Anning: Remarkable Creatures, I read it from the library, but will pick up a copy one day.

I bought Polaris for my Kindle yesterday. Need to read it for my RL book group, by the second Monday in March. Should be able to make that, if my health continues to improve.

I got Clockwork Angel and Across the Nightingale Floor in the mail this week. Plenty to read (on top of all the academic reading I'm doing at the moment).

I'll be interested in your thoughts on "Nightingale Floor"...

I'm liking it so far. I'll write more when I can go to the spoiler thread. :)

Stopped by the Habitat for Humanity store after work, and picked up a copy of The Winds of War and A Perfect Spy, for 50 cents each. I've not read these previously, but they were highly recommended by people here on LT.

Then I stopped by the library and found a copy of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde for 25 cents.

And I borrowed The Great Santini, as it has been recommended here as well.

When I got home, there was a box waiting for me, with an Acts commentary I ordered for my pastor, and another new book by Sam Gipp, Is Our English Bible Inspired?.

And the TBR piles grows ever higher...

My brother and his partner thinned out their bookshelves and passed on about 50 graphic novels to my kids, some for now and some for later and some for much later.

I got to go through the discard pile before they took it to the second hand book shop and I came away with:
Library of the Dead by Glenn Cooper
After Dark by Huruki Murakami
The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis.
And a bookshelf :oD

For Christmas I'd received a Persephone Books gift card and finally made my decision this month on the book. Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day was delivered a couple of weeks ago.

And finally, I think, I stopped by the bookstore while my kids were at gymnastics today and came away with Katherine by Anya Seton and Climbing Mount Improbable by Richard Dawkins.

Oh, and last week while the kids were at gymnastics, I picked up a couple of Pern books I was missing: Masterharper of Pern and Skies of Pern. Gymnastics could become an expensive sport...

Family birthday present last month was to be let loose on loot.co.za (local equivalent of Amazon) -- family don't know the gift certificate option! Today I collected the resultant haul from the post:
Cooking Apicius by Sally Grainger and
The Basque History of the World by Mark Kurlansky.

Dipped into both and think I made the right choice.

#66 - After Dark is the only Murakami that I've read but it was creepy in a good way. Made me go get another one of his books but that one is still in the TBR pile...

The annual book sale is on but this far nothing in the catalogue has piqued my interest. I did get an omnibus of an old childhood favourite (Den stora boken om Barna Hedenhös) the other day, but that's all, so far.

It really irks me - recently a lot of staple stories from my childhood has been re-released and without exception every book that shows some slight trace of what could be interpreted as racist is being either excluded from publishing or re-written. Point in case is the book about these Hedenhös kids hosting a stone age Olympic game event - it's simply omitted from the omnibus. As a kid I loved it but of course pitch black Africans and Egyptians who can't turn a curve (they're in profile so continue straight ahead when the track takes a turn) is non-acceptable today? The book where the author spread the lie that the Canary Islands is part of sunken Atlantis, and that every civilised (European!) language emanates from there is deemed acceptable, though.
And, to be honest - they were written for FUN, not as education. There's lot of fun stuff in them, and kids can parse that.

*shakes head*

Another example is of a book that I actually own. Ture Sventon i Paris is a YA crime novel that has a scene where the detective's sidekick, who is an Arab, applies black shoe polish to his face and hands to play the part of a gentleman's, woe me! the N-word!, chauffeur. The cover gets broken when he sit down in an empty but watched gallery and breaks out the polish.
That other books in the series are as flagrant in their reliance on stereotypes is apparently no problem. Ture Sventon i London gets no flak for its depiction of an English lord, and to depict travelling circus people as sub-standard people is no problem either.

Both of these series are written in the late 40's and 50's and it is very easy to deflect the attitudes displayed. And both are still basically good storytelling. I wonder what this kind of process would do to some of Heinlein's YA!

Or - I don't; I know most of them wouldn't survive ;-)

#68 - I feel your pain. I regret that the evolution of man seems to mean that we are becoming very thin-skinned. We should be able to read a book from the past and be glad that we've moved on from there, but instead we don't want to admit that we ever traveled that road.

# - 69 - Yes, indeed.
Personally I think violating the text an author wrote only to salve hurt feelings is intolerant, nonchalant and ignorant. It's exactly what censure did in the former east, and still do in large parts of Asia. When they do it we decry the practice but somehow it's OK when we do it?!

Just came in the mail from Edward R. Hamilton (I love their catalogs):

Death From the Skies: The Science Behind the End of the World
The Farfarers: A New History of North America
Supercontinent: Ten Billion Years in the Life of Our Planet

(69, 70) I don't think that books should be edited to 'conform' with the current ideas on what is offensive and what is not.

If it offends you, don't read it. I've done that with a number of books, and far more movies.

A number of years ago I bought a beautifully illustrated edition of The Jungle Book (see http://www.librarything.com/work/9468398/book/80731855), but was horrified to discover that much of it had been edited, "modernized". And, get this, there was nothing inside or on the cover to indicate that it had been abridged or altered. It might be legal to make changes without notification, but it strikes me as being wrong.

Ah, don't get me started...

68 - Busifer, I read many Heinleins, but so long ago I don't even remember them having "objectionable" content, whether racism or stereotyping, except towards women which didn't bother me at the time. I just remember enjoying them quite a bit. Makes me wonder what I'll make of them nowadays when I reread them (which I plan to do eventually).

Innocently entered a used bookstore looking for one specific paperback. Left with 5 books, and am looking forward to these two that I haven't read yet:

Infernal Devices by K.W. Jeter and A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. Both for less than half the retail price!

#72 - Exactly.

#73 - I think the attitude towards woman is bad enough ;-)
And yes, I too loved them. Those I have reread raises my hackles but if I can just let myself ignore some things the book in itself often is still good.

Found some books in a charity shop today -
two paperbacks;
Driftglass, by Samuel R Delaney
The doors of his face, the lamps of his mouth, by Roger Zelazny, and
a very nice hardback 1970 edition of
Ture Sventon Privatdetektiv : en samlingsvolym, by Åke Holmberg. The omnibus contains three books, none of which I had. Three YA crime novels originally written in the 50's, nicely illustrated.

All of these for 19 SEK = US$2.9/UK£1.83. A bargain!
Especially the hardback. I had easily shelled out some substantial money to get my hands on it.

I got four books on Saturday for 10p (about 15 cents) each. They are
Ancient Light by Mary Gentle
On the flip side by Nicholas Fisk
The herb of grace by Elizabeth Goudge and
The rising tide by Molly Keane.

I'm supposed to be giving up buying books during Lent, but surely it doesn't count when they are 10 p each? ;-)

I just got home with Intruder (Foreigner novel #13, first in the fifth three-book story arch)!!!
*makes insane happy dance!!!*

I'm so far behind on the Foreigner series, Busifer. I've read the first three...

I was bad last night...I ordered three books:

Jeremy Poldark
Demelza
Coyote, the Wonder Wolf

:hangs head in shame:

At least I've read Demelza recently (from the library). The other two will be rereads. :)

#78 - you lucky *euphemism* dog -- how did you pull that one? I have the title pre-ordered from B&N - isn't the release for April or something like that?

I love this series.

#80 - March 6th. But for some reasons Daw ship early to the Nordics - up to two weeks prior to official release date. I had mine pre-ordered but received no notice of it so grew worried and when an acquaintance in Finland got her copy I went to the local SF/F bookshop and yes - they had it, and possibly a change in computer systems (and a refurbishing of the shop, if I'm to make a guess) had resulted in my order getting lost.

I only hope these books shipped early count as "first week sales", not getting lost in the statistics!