The Abundant Arrivals of April

These books that I ordered last week arrived today:

Foghorn Passage by Alison Lohans
Miss Buncle Married by D. E. Stevenson
The Two Mrs. Abbotts by D. E. Stevenson

I read the two D. E. Stevenson books years age, but I didn't have my own copies. Both were recently republished, so I seized the opportunity.

Got a copy of The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison today. Read the sample chapter a few weeks ago and was hooked!

After all the positive reviews for The Books of the Raksura, I've snagged a copy of The Cloud Roads to play catch-up with the Group Read.

A package arrived from amazon today with my name on (wonder how that could have happened?!) containing Written in red by Anne Bishop and Shards of time, the new (and maybe last) Nightrunner book by Lynn Flewelling.

...and The Shining Ones is down to £1.99 for UK Kindles - I've had my eye on it for a while, so I have taken this as a sign. Because there's no arguing with signs, right?

Amazon have delivered another package! *shock* The Snow Child is the first acquisition of the month.

>4 Sakerfalcon:
>6 Peace2:

Do you think that they're getting your name from the phone book?

>7 suitable1: They're definitely in cahoots with someone but I'm not sure it's the phone book because they seem to be able to guess my taste too well :P

I also managed to temporarily forget that I brought a book home that I got through the book club that visits work. So today I also acquired Fast Cooking by James Martin *oops*

Amazon just keep discounting my wish list (what a shame). Now the delighted owner (actually slightly bouncing) of The Rabbit Back Literature Society.

Thank you imyril - The rabbit back literature society is now residing on my kindle :-) As is the anthology of Finnish spec fic that was listed on the same page. I seem to have given up willpower for Lent ...

Other than using my audible.com credits, I'm trying to read stuff I've already bought. I did succumb to a $2 Agatha Christie late last month (Kindle deal), but my towering TBR pile beckons and so I've been able to resist anything that isn't on my NEED list. Who knows how long it will last. In a way, my latest audio book is serving as a gateway drug for a TBR denizen - Peter the Great His Life and World, which is a huge book, but one I think I'll tackle next because of Catherine the Great.

>10 Sakerfalcon: I think giving up willpower is much more fun than some of the other things we give up...

Oh! I was ambushed by a sale in a charity shop on books.... the same shop that lured me into buying some astronomical pile of books last week - clearly whoever had given them the books last week has either given them another pile this week or they couldn't fit them all in the shop last week - I have however, valiantly helped them with this difficulty, disregarding my own welfare as I gained a case of 'severe blue fingers' from carrying my acquisitions back to the car (you know the one where the bags are so heavy they're cutting off the circulation to your fingertips!). It was quite a haul - just to forewarn anyone reading on...

By Brandon Sanderson - The Alloy of Law, Steelheart, Legion and the Emperor's Soul, Warbreaker and Elantris (these were also book bullets of a sort in that I'd seen the author mentioned very positively and had put a few books on to my Amazon wishlist and so took the chance to buy whatever I could as they're not available at our local library or bookshop - I'll need advice on where to start with these.)

By Robin Hobb - Royal Assassin and Assassin's Quest - these complete a trilogy for which the first part was already on the shelf

By Tanith Lee - East of Midnight, The Birthgrave and The Storm Lord - these are a bit of a risk take as I've read some by this author before and loved them and others and hated them, so I'll just have to see what happens.

By Trudi Canavan - Voice of The Gods, The High Lord and Last of the Wilds - bit of a slip up here as I already had two of these - I knew I had one but couldn't remember which but it's not a problem, I'll just pass them along.

by Brent Weeks - The Black Prism and The Blinding Knife - no idea what to expect with these

by Peter V. Brett - The Painted Man and The Desert Spear - again no idea but they look brand new

by Stephen Donaldson - Lord Foul's Bane, The Illearth War and The Power That Preserves - remember these being read by some friends back when I was a student, but there was a mixed reaction to whether people liked them - I had so many other finds to read at the time that I just never worried about getting to them, so this is my chance (only 20 years late!)

following @richardderus 's comments about Jack Vance I picked up The Brave Free Men, Big Planet and The Asutra to try out - unfortunately these were the only ones I could find in the pile and not the ones mentioned.

and the final four individual titles - The Lady of Sorrows by Cecilia Dart-Thornton (missing book from a series I already own), Fires of Azeroth by C J Cherryh (I bought a few last week and thought this might be part of the same collection - but I was wrong), The Shattered Chain by Marion Zimmer Bradley (another to add to the Darkover collection I started last week but haven't read yet and The Wizard of Boland by B.B. (I'd been looking for The Little Grey Men because I had a vague recollection of it so when I came across this instead I thought it would be worth a try).

And all of that for £6.75 - it can't be bad, can it? I might have to change my choices for the ReadaThing at this point.

>13 Peace2: wow! One of my local charity shops goes through patches of getting in great stock - and always has a quarter of their stock at half price (they colour code everything, so they just have to change the sign saying which colour is discounted rather than retag stock - smart cookies) - but I've never managed a haul like that :)

That's two weeks running I've managed it (my home is groaning under the additional weight!).

Wow, that is an amazing haul! I wonder if someone had recently acquired an e-reader and is getting rid of all their paper editions. I too find I either love or hate Tanith Lee's books, but the ones I love are so good that I'll try anything I find by her on the chance it will match up. I love Jack Vance, but the ones you've found are not his best books (of those that I've read). But they still show his strengths of bizarre, elaborate societies with strange customs and rituals, and his rather dry humour, usually expressed through his characters' manner of speech.

>13 Peace2: Wow, that's a great deal! I'm jealous...

Ahem, me again. I've been hit by a lot of book bullets since joining the GD :) This is leading to me acquiring a lot of books (yay!). On the up side, Amazon appears to be listening in, as it's another one in the Kindle Spring Sale - London Falling by Paul Cornell today.

AAAAARRRGGGHHHH!

So I went to B&N to pick up a cover for my nook.

Really!!

See, my nook is old and seeing as B&N won't be making them for that much longer and I have a road trip planned today, I didn't want it to be banging around in my bag without a cover.

So...a cover.

And I got one. A very nice one. It has a lizard on it. Wait, no, that's my crown. No that's Julian's crown.

Anyway...these followed me home -
Live By Night by Dennis Lehane
Guide to the National Parks of the United States

Both were on sale though. That's something.

I could envy you the National Parks guide. Even more if the U.S.A. weren't so far away.

>13 Peace2: Oh my gracious! Such a haul. I am impressed and envious! Enjoy the pleasure of having more books than you can read. I know I do.

I sneaked back in today - I took them some things I needed to get rid of ... it was more than I brought away with me today but didn't balance what I got yesterday.... So there were another twelve added to the pile today - another Peter V Brett (the next in the series I picked up yesterday), a couple more Jack Vance, another Darkover, an Ursula Le Guin and an Anne McCaffrey and the third part of a trilogy by Allan Cole and Chris Bunch and 4 books by Sergei Lukyanenko that seemed to be a set and nearly new. All of them were still in the sale. I think I've got the best of what's there now, but I did see that they have piles of boxes labelled books but not open for perusal - I'm not sure whether I'm afraid of missing something good or whether I'm afraid of going back in and coming out with even more!

I think I've reached the point of needing to approach the ReadaThing as if it were a Readathon!

Delighted to have gotten books to review from Canada and England. Just finished/reviewed "Cally's Way" by Jane Bow. Will start reading "Never Run Away" by Julie C. Round as soon as I can. (Recently posted review of Seth Kaufman's "If You Give an Architect a Contract," which he mailed me from then-snowy New York.) Three LT authors in a row.

I went to visit a friend in Colchester today and came home with :
The new school at Scawdale by Angela Brazil
Boneland by Alan Garner (I read it last year but wanted my own copy)
Pilgrimage 3 by Dorothy Richardson
The wild shore by Kim Stanley Robinson
God's war by Kameron Hurley

All were £1 or 99p each, apart from the school story which was a duplicate that my friend passed on to me.

@hfglen yeah, this whole ocean in between continents thing is a pain. Husband and I have been meaning to get one for a long time since we often make a NP or NM the focal point of our vacations. State parks, too, especially in California...at least the ones that are still open.

13> That's a lot of books! Out of all of them, I've only read the Brandon Sanderson books. By chance, you got books all stand-alones or in different series. You can start with any of them.

Downbelow Station and The Steerswoman came in today. I've also just got my hands on a copy of London Falling. It should be a good month for books.

>26 pwaites: I haven't read Alloy of law yet, but shouldn't one read the Mistborn trilogy before that one?

27> It's set three hundred years later, so it stands up perfectly well on it's own. There's a few in references that only people who've read the Mistborn trilogy would get, and the broad ending (humanity survives) is revealed. But the specifics have lost to time.

It is possible that I should unsubscribe to Audible's Deal of the Day. I purchased 5 books in March, all for under $4.

So far in April, I've already purchased 2.
The Inventors Secret: Cragbridge Hall, book 1 by Chad Morris
Gulp by Mary Roach (I blame YOU, clamairy)

I am calling these work therapy, since I listen to audio books on my commute, but honestly, I'm afraid to add up how many hours of listening I already have ahead of me. Not to mention that the current one I'm listening to is 19 hours, 58 min. long and seems never-ending.

I, too, succumbed to the allure of Gulp from Audible. Also Mark Twain’s Helpful Hints for Good Living: A Handbook for the Damned Human Race.

In other news, I was at an antique market yesterday, and found four books by authors that I've been wanting to try out. They were very reasonably priced, too.
The New House Captain by Dorita Fairlie Bruce;
Cherry Tree Perch by Josephine Elder;
Strangers at the Farm School by Josephine Elder;
The New Abbey Girls by Elsie J. Oxenham.

>30 SylviaC: Those are great finds! I'm not as keen on Oxenham's books as a lot of people are, but I've loved the titles by Elder and Bruce that I've read. I look forward to finding out what you think when you get around to reading them.

>29 MrsLee: and >30 SylviaC: Well, I already have Gulp in paper form, so I was able to resist it from Audible, but I succumbed to Audible itself. Finally subscribed once I finished Hat Full of Sky and realized my library doesn't have the unabridged version of the next two books. Stephen Briggs is an awesome reader. I used my two promotion points to get:

Wee Free Men - which I've listened to before, but am happy to have my own copy to listen to again
Wintersmith - I am so looking forward to finding out what Tiffany gets up to next.

>32 sandragon: I loved Nigel Planer's narration of The Colour of Magic—and I don't usually care much for listening to fiction.

>33 SylviaC: I love listening to the Discworld books on audio. I can see myself using up future credits for more of them.

Three Parts Dead arrived today. Hooray!

>32 sandragon: - A good choice! I may have to look into Audible Pratchett stories. I only pay the minimum member fee, so don't receive free credits, but every now and then books are in the $12 -$15 range, which is OK.

Today I succumbed to The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. Only because it was $1.95 and my son said he would like to listen to it sometime.

I think I'd like to try some of the Terry Pratchett on audio - unfortunately the library don't seem to have any - maybe I'll have to ask, see if they'd consider them for future purchases!

>36 MrsLee: There must be different Audible plans available between the US and Canada. The lowest plan available to me is a monthly membership for $14.95 which gives me 1 credit a month to apply to any audiobook. So, unless one comes up as a daily deal, that means at least 12 Pratchett audiobooks a year. Woohoo!

>37 Peace2: As you may have deduced, I highly recommend Pratchett on audio :o)

>38 sandragon: Yep, I'm an "AudibleListener Light" it is $9.95 a year, no free credits, but access to deals when they have them. :) I suppose if there were a whole series, like Pratchett, that I wanted, it would pay to do the monthly membership fee and get the free credit.

I'm reading Flame of Sevenwaters.  I was a little hesitant about going into this one because the main character is a burn victim who can't use her hands to their full potential.  I still wonder if Marillier wrote this character in reaction to her bout with breast cancer.  I know that isn't nice of me to say, but we of diminished abilities and mobility, who've lived with it our entire lives, get tired of having our stories told for us, especially if it's by someone who thinks they get it because of one fleeting experience.

Anyone watch Futurama?  What comes to mind is Fry saying, "...after two weeks down here, I'll truly understand the plight of the mutant people."

I know that breast cancer is scary, and I hope it's something I never have to truly understand, but it is not the same as living with a life-long condition.  And please don't substitute the word "living" with "coping".  I feel it's more those around us who have to cope with seeing what we go through; we just go through it like anyone else goes through with their own respective lots.

I only have a limp, and with the constant help of my husband, it has diminished considerably.  There's little unique about a limp.  Most people have some idiosyncratic quality to their gait.  I'll take my limp over being someone who stomps when they walk.  Nevertheless, I've been *admired* for coping with my "disability".

I don't want to think poorly of Marillier, especially if none of this has anything to do with the character she has written, but these are all the feelings and unkind thoughts that have surfaced while reading.  It's still a good story, and these are the sort of thoughts and feelings I've probably needed to face and analyze, anyway.  That's one of the reasons we read, isn't it?

I Kindled up, and powered through, the three novels and one short story of the Chronicles of St Mary's:

Just One Damned Thing After Another
A Symphony of Echoes
When A Child is Born - A Christmas Short Story
A Second Chance

I've reviewed all but the last on the book pages. Tomorrow I'll get to that one. They're charming tales of time travel, adventure, sex, and history. What's not to love?

Question to you Audible folks - when you purchase a book can you listen to it again or do you have to pay for it again?

42> Once you pay for it, you can listen to it over and over again.

It looks like two people can listen at the same time as well. My son and I have been listening to Wintersmith on two different devices.

>44 sandragon: That's good to know. I don't think you can do that with the Kindle library on Amazon. It keeps wanting to "sync on all devices."

Shards of Time arrived from Amazon along with The Library a world history. The "Library" book is really heavy - not sure I'll be able to read that in bed!
At the moment though I have at least one public library book on loan which has to go back so must be read plus several downloaded from their ebook service.
I wish the weekend was 5 days long and the week only 2!
But "Shards" will be my 4 day Easter break treat to read.

I picked up a discounted copy of The Wise Man's Fear for my Kindle. I'm not a huge fan of Rothfuss, and I liked this installment even less than the first, but they're well enough written that I'll come back for the third installment (and appreciate having them as ebooks rather than chunky paperback doorstops!) No resentment paying for the ebooks on offer given I bought the paperbacks secondhand anyway ;)

47> I think I'll read the third as well, but it's been years since I've read the first two. It'd probably be better if I reread them before the third book comes out, but I don't know if I'd want to put in the effort. Also, it's been three years since the second book came out, and the third book is still no where in sight with an unconfirmed release date that keeps getting pushed back.

>48 pwaites: Then I'll wait with re-reading the first and starting the second until the third one has come out. I did like the first one, but I do not fancy having to re-read it a second time (and no, I did not say the same thing twice in that sentence, I meant reading it a third time...).

>29 MrsLee: I take full responsibility for that one. I love everything she's written, and that was no exception.

Such wonderful books. I received a couple of D.E. Stevenson books in the mail and am enjoying her warm, wonderful storytelling.

Chapters/Indigo shipped me a couple of books thanks to a gift card from my daughter for my birthday - Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald and The Bear. The latter is a fictional telling of a husband and wife who are attacked by a bear while camping, leaving their two little children to fend for themselves. It's told from the 5 year old girl's perspective and has been compared to Room which I enjoyed tremendously.

I also gave in to a yearning for S by Doug Dorst and JJ Abrams. It sounds just too intriguing to pass up.

And, Costco had Joseph Boyden's new book The Orenda, so I succumbed.

And, The Folio Society is having their annual set sale, so I ordered their gorgeous Narnia set, as my old Puffins will not survive another reading. And while I was visiting the Folio site I figured I might as well get them to include their edition of The Railway Children, it just happened to be on sale as well.

No will power, that's me in a nut shell.

I just got my new Audible credit and have been convinced by those whose opinion I value to start listening to Pratchett. :)

>45 MrsLee: The audible app keeps track, and will tell me if I'm further ahead on a different machine, then politely asks if I'd like to sync to that position. I just select no and am good to go.

I've also found out that you don't need the Audible app for listening to Audible books. My MIL has an iphone and is vision impaired, so I've been keeping her supplied in audiobooks. She's used to the iphone music app for listening to audiobooks and I didn't want her to have to get used to another app. Using the Audible manager, I can transfer books to iTunes and then to her iphone, so now she can share on my Audible account as well.

>51 katylit: Such riches! Which Pratchett did you decide on?
*is practically struck dumb that you've never read a Pratchett*

I know, I feel full to overflowing with bookish riches :)

I was torn when I visited Audible last night, Pratchett was calling to me, but so was The Martian - who was talking about that recently? After listening to the samples of each I decided I was more in the mood for A Martian Robinson Crusoe. Probably a bad choice actually. I'm finding the story so compelling I didn't get to sleep last night 'til past 2! Lol. It's a great story.

I'll get Pratchett next month.

Had to go to the hardware store this afternoon, and on my way back to the car two books ran out of the used-book store and jumped in with me:

The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde and
The Hammer of God by Arthus C. Clarke.

Now I could hardly chase them back, could I? So I offered them a home.

The heading of this thread reminds me of a favourite (anti)hero of mine.

Clemenz Heinrich Wehdemann was born in 1760-something in the Kingdom of Hanover. In due course he became a mercenary soldier with the VOC and was posted to the Cape. When the Honourable Company went phut in 1795 he stayed on, developing his art and teaching skills. In 1807 he contracted smallpox and moved up the coast from Cape Town for his health. He taught farm kids the 3Rs, and supplemented his income by making paintings of the local flora, which he sold in sets, and one exquisite set of little wooden boxes, each from a different indigenous timber. Each box contains a painting of the perishable parts of the tree and a short description in his quaint, self-taught English, and usually a bamboo tube containing seeds of the tree.

One tree description notes how he found it "on my arrivement on the farm of Cornelis Vermaak ...". And so I look forward to reading of the "arrivement" of books in some future month beginning with an A.

>54 hfglen:
Make sure they have had their shots

>56 suitable1: Fortunately the municipality is offering free rabies shots for pets this month.

(By the way, that's perfectly genuine: the tropical nasties we live with here include rabies virus)

54> The Big Over Easy is a lot of fun. I kept getting the feeling that there were references to nursery rhymes I didn't know, but I really enjoyed the ones I did get.

A replacement set of Louise Cooper's Chaos Gate trilogy is on its way to me- my copies of The Deceiver and The Avenger have gone missing, and the one I did find, The Pretender, was in pretty rough shape. I remain bemused by the US covers these books received. Is that Fabio on The Pretender? Why is Yandros in a bathrobe on The Avenger? Why is a woman summoning Calcifer in a cup on The Deceiver? Perhaps, with reading, all will be made clear...

The River has been good at baiting me this month, and I didn't have opportunities to browse a good physical selection so it's all ebooks so far.

Anathem by Neal Stephenson
Among others by Jo Walton
Let the Right One in
Purge by by Sofi Oksanen
La mécanique du talion by Laurent Genefort (French SciFi)
The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss

On our very brief annual vacation, I bought Sudbury : rail town to regional capital, because I'm curious about the history of a city that is built on, around and through a huge amount of solid rock.

Today I was tempted by some non-fiction: Deep Sea and Foreign Going: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry that Brings you 90% of Everything - I think I just have a weakness for things related to the sea, and I'm curious about life inside modern container shipping.

After a long and stressful week, I gave in and ordered something I've been wanting for a long time: the ten-volume reprint set of Ashinano Hitoshi's manga Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou (ヨコハマ買い出し紀行, Record of a Yokohama Shopping Trip), a slice-of-life story about an android who runs a coffee shop in a future where humanity is slowly dying out after an unspecified disaster. I first read this in fan-translations on the internet probably ten years ago, and completely fell in love with the gentle story and beautifully sparse artwork, but was only able to buy a couple of the middle volumes before it went out of print. Now even the reprint seems to be slowly going out of print, so I bit the bullet. I really wish someone would pick this series up and give it a proper release in English so it could reach a wider audience.

Oooh, there's a little ebook prequel about Mr Penumbra set in the 60s (Ajax Penumbra: 1969), about he stumbled across a certain 24-hour bookstore - I couldn't resist that (I don't normally do novellae, but I loved Edie Investigates almost as much as I enjoyed Angelmaker, so it has sweetened me to the idea).

I picked up The Assassin's Curse and The Pirate's Wish from today's Kindle Daily Deal, and I acquired a miscellany of things from book sales over the weekend that I need to catalog- most interesting is probably Fiona Patton's The Stone Prince, first in her Branion series, historical-influenced created-world fantasy in a supposedly gender-neutral setting, which I've had my eye on for a while.

I also backed Crossed Genres Magazine's Kickstarter at the "GIANT EBOOK BUNDLE" level, which includes seven multi-author anthologies, a single-author collection, and two novels for $50. I've read Winter Well (four novellas about older women) and Crossed Genres Magazine 2.0 Book One through Early Reviewers and really enjoyed them, and I have Long Hidden on my TBR from Early Reviewers as well. Their stories are generally right up my alley- they go out of their way to publish stories from a very diverse group of authors, and the variety is refreshing to read. If this interests you, please continue backing to keep the magazine open, they are almost 90% of the way there but have just a couple of days left.

I got Motel of the Mysteries by David Macaulay through the post after seeing it in a thread on Name That Book. It's a very quick read but quite humorous. I've finished it already!

My latest order arrived today. Lovely old books by some favourite authors.

Honey for Tea by Elizabeth Cadell
The Yellow Brick Road by Elizabeth Cadell
Anna and Her Daughters by D. E. Stevenson
Ann and her Mother by O. Douglas
False Colours by Georgette Heyer (This one is a replacement copy.)

Gosh! April has ended with a sudden rush: I had ordered myself a copy of The Witching Hour to see if the suck fairy had been to visit (because it's safe to say my tastes have changed in the past 20 years!) and then this morning a box arrived from my Mum with a delightful trove:

The Golem and the Djinni - GD book bullet :)
Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH ready for the June read!
Lud-in-the-Mist
Still Life - another LT book bullet!

Given I finished my book last night, what perfect timing. Now, how to choose, how to choose...

The Folio Society better end their spring sale soon. I just received Travels with Charley as well as the double box sets of Katherine Briggs' Folk Tales of Britain. Gorgeous books and Folio very kindly slipped in a $20 voucher with each order.

So I really think I should order another book, y'know, so those lovely little vouchers don't go to waste.