What did you buy Today? August 2007 Edition

First buys this August:

Solstice, by Joyce Carol Oates
Slowness, by Milan Kundera
The Pillow Friend, by Lisa Tuttle
H.P. Lovecraft's Favorite Weird Tales, edited by Douglas A. Anderson

All from a stack of sale books at a leading bookstore which is having an anniversary sale this month. I must've picked them all out within five minutes of entering the shop -- unplanned, impulsive, but very happy purchases!

Will the Vampire People Please Leave the Lobby? by Allyson Beatrice -- which I've read in part before, mostly because I participate in some of the boards she writes about and saw them in their original form. It's snarkingly funny, the more so because it's =all= true.

I picked up Matthew Hart's The Irish Game a True Story of Crime and Art, The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear and illustrated by Stephane Jorisch -and Donna Leon's Through a Glass, Darkly
The touchstones aren't working.

I received Georges Bataille's Collected Poems.

I'm very excited that I was able to pick up the manga I ordered today, Her Majesty's Dog 2.

One arrival from Amazon today: They were counted by Miklos Banffy, a sweeping fictional portrait of pre-1914 Hungarian Transylvania.

Also picked up a copy of Penelope Fitzgerald: Innocence at my local charity shop (half-price sale). I haven't read anything by her, but have seen good reports of her, so will try this one.

I scored a couple more books from the sale stack:

The Silver Bough, by Lisa Tuttle
Vintage Living Texts: Jeanette Winterson, by Margaret Reynolds

I ordered the boxed set of the first six volumes of Harry Potter in paperback for my son's birthday... But Amazon said it will take at least a month to get it out. They must be back ordered. I was pretty surprised, as the only time a book delivery has ever been delayed is when it's pre-ordered.

Two books by Bertolt Brecht:
Pauken und Trompeten and
Kalendergeschichten

Both in rororo Taschenbuch.

Today I purchased:

Schooled by Gordon Korman (youth fiction)
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (SO glad to finally have this!)
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (too many recommendations to put this book off any longer...lol)
Uncle John's Bathroom Reader for Kids Only LOL!! Yes, a classic.
Teach Like Your Hair's On Fire by Rafe Esquith
Deal Breaker by Harlan Coben (his first Myron Bolitar book)
A Morbid Taste for Bones by Ellis Peters (the first Brother Cadfael myster)

What a productive day at B. Dalton!

stopped at B&N to get The Water's Lovely - the latest Ruth Rendell. Also came out with Absolute Friends by Le Carre and The Overnight by Ramsey Cambell. Haven't read any horror in forever, so thought this might be a good way to get a dose of the heebie jeebies.

Went to the Salvation Army today and they had a 'buy one, get one' sale on books so I had to take some home with me. These are what I bought today:

Sing Down the Moon by Scott O'Dell
Thinner
The Dark Half
Dreamcatcher all by Stephen King
Miss Bianca in the Salt Mines by Margery Sharp
Surfeit of Lampreys by Ngaio Marsh
True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence
Into the Dream by William Sleator
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

Found Famous Ships of World War 2 and Air War in the Falklands 1982 at an estate sale yesterday.

Via Amazon "McLaren Memories," "Pro Sports Car Racing in America," and He 111 showed up on Friday.

Yay! I just got a copy of InterWorld, by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves, over my lunch break! =D

I bought Thomas Browne's Urne-Burial, in Penguin's Great Ideas, and Berlijn, the Dutch translation of the Top 10 Guide to Berlin. We're thinking of visiting Berlin in September.

Saturday I bought a replacement copy of Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, since my aunt stole my old one. And on amazon I ordered:

The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie (Don't judge me)
The Bizarro Starter Kit by Carlton Mellick III

Just got back from B&N where I picked up the new edition of Puff, the Magic Dragon by Peter Yarrow, Lenny Lipton & Eric Puybaret.

Fell into Persephone Books last night and couldn't leave without A Fortnight in September by R.C. Sherriff, Cheerful weather for the wedding by Julia Strachey and A House in the Country by Jocelyn Playfair.

Off the 3 for 2 table at Borders:
The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

also:
I'm Pregnant!: A Week-by-Week Guide from Conception to Birth
The Expectant Father: Facts, Tips, and Advice for Dads-to-Be

>19 scaifea:

Let me guess...

Just arrived from Amazon:

Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford

Twenty Days with Julian & Little Bunny By Papa by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Madame de Pompadour by Nancy Mitford

From work:
The Rough Face Girl
The Book That Jack Wrote

Picture books rule.

Received my early reviewer copy of Tipperary by Frank Delaney today. Does that count?

I hit the $1.00 a book table again at Stop and Shop and picked up The Silver Kiss by Annette curtis Klause which I've been wanting to re-read and Night Shift Night Shadow by Nora Roberts. I've heard a lot about her books but haven't read anything by her yet.

#20 henkl: Well, not quite yet, but yep my husband and I are trying...

Curse the corporate bookstore (and the take shelves).

Song of Susannah
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Spook Country
Disgrace
Shadow of the Wind
The Omnivore's Dilemma

Total cost? $17.39

Also - met a lovely man who was lost, wandering by my desk carrying a package. Personally took him to the office in question. He was very nice. He gave me something out of the package. It was a press packet for Thursday Next with a movie, bumper sticker, button, and alternate first chapter.

As he was walking away, I realized who the guy was.

Jasper Fforde?

He had a meeting about how Thursday Next is on the NYT bestsellers, and what that means for the next book. Reportedly. I thought he was a delivery guy.

Unbelievable!!!!
Of course, I myself would have realized who he was after he had left the place!!!!

Traded in a couple of used books, and came home with ...

I Am Not Myself These Days by Josh Kilmer-Purcell
I'm Not the New Me by Wendy McClure

Decided to fill in my Grand Dames of British murder mysteries and ordered 4 books from Abe's which arrived today -
A Fatal Inversion by Barbara Vine aka Ruth Rendell
The Bridesmaid by Ruth Rendell proper
Make Death Love Me by Rendell again
and
Devices and Desires by P.D. James

I have only read the last one, so am looking forward to some quality time with Ms. R.

"Panzerwrecks 2" showed up via Amazon yesterday.

Received as an advance birthday gift from a friend: After the Quake by Haruki Murakami.

A whole raft of Osprey booklets (14 in total) showed up from Edward Hamilton yesterday; at two-thirds off shelf price I had to pull the trigger!

I bought 19 books at a library booksale Saturday, including:

The Master Puppeteer and Park's Quest by Katherine Paterson
Elantris by Brandon Sanderson
The Golden Ocean by Patrick O'Brian
Strunk and White's Elements of Style
The Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren
Sherwood by Parke Godwin
Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier
The Witches by Roald Dahl
Several John Grisham books
Constantine by Frank G. Slaughter

And some others I can't remember at the moment. All for $4.

I bought Kruisvaarders naar Jeruzalem : geschiedenis van de eerste kruistocht by C.D.J. Brandt, a short history of the first crusade. I bought it mainly because Brandt was one of my professors when I read history (for a short period) at Utrecht University.

I received the following the other day, birthday gift from my boyfriend:

Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Sixteenth Annual Collection, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling
Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Eighteenth Annual Collection, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling
Flights: Extreme Visions of Fantasy: Volume II, edited by Al Sarrantonio

And got the following from the sale stack at a local bookstore:

Several Perceptions, by Angela Carter
Shadow Dance, by Angela Carter

2 new audible.com downloads -
Killer Instinct the new Joseph Finder
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman

This morning at the weekly book market:

Groot lied-boek by G.A. Brederode, a 17th C. Dutch poet;
Der Mensch und die Kultur by Johan Huizinga, the text of a lecture planned for May 1938 in Vienna; the Anschluss of March had made this impossible.

I really lucked out yesterday: my favourite bookstore had volumes 6 and 8 of Osamu Tezuka's biography of the Buddha in their bargain section! I've wanted personal copies of this series for quite a while now, and they were only $8 each. Too bad they didn't have any of the others; for that price, I'd probably have bought the whole series in one fell swoop.

I bought Triptych by Karin Slaughter at the grocery store. I can't even go out to buy food without coming home with another book. lol

Today I bought Triptych also, along with Critical by Robin Cook.

I got Robin McKinley's Deerskin at a book sale yesterday. Happy!

Via Half Price Books:
Phoenix over the Nile : a history of Egyptian air power, 1932-1994
Rising Tide: The Untold Story of the Russian Submarines That Fought the Cold War
USS Ranger: The Navy's First Flattop from Keel to Mast, 1934-1946
Ocean liners of the past: Queen Mary, the Cunard White Star quadruple-screw North Atlantic liner
Liners: The Golden Age

Via LuLu (print on demand):
Rhodesian Air Force Operations with Airstrike Log

Via Articles of War (my favorite specialist bookstore):
Granicus 334 BC: Alexander's First Persian Victory
Naseby 1645: The triumph of the New Model Army
Winds of Destruction: The Autobiography of a Rhodesian Combat Pilot

Via Amazon:
The fall of Paris; the siege and the Commune, 1870-71

Tell me the truth, am I in a rut?

arrived from amazon -
Crooked Little Vein which is surely the tiniest hardcover I have seen in a long time. Aggravating.
and
Ex Libris: Confessions of a common reader

touchstones uncooperative.

A Penguin Poets: Collected Verse by Hilaire Belloc;
A biblical verse drama (in Dutch): Esther : een aaneenschakeling van dramatische tafereelen by Willem de Mérode;
a collection of stories by Louis Couperus: Schimmen van schoonheid;
100% Amsterdam, a travel guide (we're going to Amsterdam instead of Berlin, as I said in #15).

#45 Huzzah for Crooked Little Vein! I know, it's dinky. But it's filled with love! And rat pee.

American Gods
The Long Goodbye

I didn't buy, but won it in a wellness promotion at work Lipsmackin' Backpackin': Lightweight trail-tested Recipes for Backcountry Trips.

A dentist appointment brought me to town & while there I went to the library. They had not 1, but 3 carts loaded with discards & I brought home:
The breakdown Lane by Jacquelyn Mitchard
Basket case Carl Hiaasen
Dreams of sleep Josephine Humphreys
TisFrank McCourt
Poet & dancer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
The wild island
Antonia Fraser
Blindmess Jose Saramago
Brightness Falls Jay McInerney
Because it is bitter & because it is my heart Joyce Carol Oates
Old dogs & children Robert Inman
At first sight Nicholas Sparks
The ice queen Alice Hoffman
The end of summer is a slow time at the library & a lot of weeding gets done.

Marvelous Effect - the Black Harry Potter is what it is billed as. Haven't finished yet, but it is captivating. Read-alike for d.j. machale!

Ocean - requires strong muscles

Crab Wars loved it from the library and knew I had to own a copy

Dh just got all of the Conan books and some others by Robert E. Howard from Amazon. The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane looks particularly interesting.

From the charity shop:

The Book of Guys by Garrison Keillor
Global Village Idiot by John O'Farrell

At the used bookstore I picked up a copy of Dark Lover: A Black Dagger Brotherhood Novel which I've already read but wanted a copy of for my collection.

At the other bookstore I picked up two YAs half-price. The Demon in the Teahouse by Dorothy Hoobler and Wolf Tower by Tanith Lee.

Continuing on a recent Franco-Prussian War theme, just got Eugenie: The Empress and Her Empire by Desmond Seward.

Just bought the lovely Charles Vess illustrated hardcover edition of Stardust by Neil Gaiman.

Saturday I found Wijsheid en schoonheid uit Indië by Henri Borel, the companion volume to Borel's Wijsheid en schoonheid uit China, which I bought about a month ago.

At the market today my catch consisted of three books, at one euro each:
Contes philosophiques; conte deuxième: Eucher de l"Ile ou la naissance de la sensibilité by Charles Maurras;
The Late Renaissance and Mannerism by Linda Murray;
De stille kracht by Louis Couperus.

i broke down and finally purchased the year of magical thinking by joan didion at a lovely little private owned bookstore. then at a used bookstore i came home with T.S. Elliot's collected poems, the beach house by james patterson, an alexander mccall smith book, the safety of objects by a.m. homes and slouching towards bethlehem by joan didion!

I went to the secondhand bookstore this afternoon to sell some of my wife's thrillers (she has them regularly sold after they have circulated among friends and relatives). There I found Elizabeth Gilmore Holt's From the classicists to the impressionists, volume III of her Documentary History of Art; I already own volumes I and II, so this was my lucky day.

audible.com was having a sale & a title from my wishlist was listed at less than the price of 1 credit, so I bought Talk Talk by T.C. Boyle who is fast becoming one of my favorite writers.

I never find any books that are mildly interesting at thrift stores, but I had a strange armload of books this last weekend that I found at the dingiest thrift shop.
Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book by Makine Hong Kingston
Balzac and the Little Seamstress by Dai Sijie
The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
Seize the Day by Saul Bellow
and
(get this...)
Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe, signed (for $1.40)
I'm not sure the validity of the signature, but from the little reseach I've done, it is a pretty close match.

I think the stangest thing about my purchases is that I have been plowing through Russian lit. this summer--Bulgakov, Gogol, among others--and these books don't look to be anything like what I have been reading. I'm looking forward to a breath of fresh air.

Gail Carson Levine's Fairy Haven and the Quest for the Wand and Ray Bradbury's The Halloween Tree.

Curse my local Barnes & Noble, being so close and carrying so many books that I want to buy!!

From a trip to B. Dalton with all 6 kids (bookstores are NOT made for strollers, man!):

Cross Bones by Kathy Reichs
Mallory's Oracle by Carol O'Connell (happy to get this because of so many recommendations!)
Vector Prime by R. A. Salvatore
The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks
Armageddon's Children by Terry Brooks
Mystic Lighthouse Mysteries by Laura Williams (3 "you solve it" mystery stories for my 10 year old daughter who has the crime/thriller/mystery bug just like her mother. :o)

I *almost* got Cell by Stephen King in hardback because it's so stinking cheap, but dh said no, we have it in pb. Pffffftt!!

Argh!! I can't stop myself!! I picked the following up from the sale stacks of a couple of bookstores:

Renaissance Faire, edited by Andre Norton and Jean Rabe
In the Night Room, by Peter Straub

Expensive People, by Joyce Carol Oates
I'll Take You there, by Joyce Carol Oates
The Barrens, by Joyce Carol Oates writing as Rosamond Smith

And today from Christianbook.com I got...

Augustine's Confessions
Twelve Extraordinary Women by John MacArthur
Jesus Among Other Gods (adult and youth editions) by Ravi Zacharias
The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence
How to Study Your Bible by Kay Arthur
Comes a Horseman and Germ both by Robert Liparulo (1st touchstone is wrong)

Lots of goodies!

#60, WellReadWellFed... I found a lovely heap of books today at the clearance shelves of two Half Price bookstore branches.

Coincidentally, one of them is Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie, which I am getting into ASAP.

Thrift shops, as well as other emporiums, often send out strong vibrations to me that there's something wonderful (usually a book) waiting to be found.

I once made an hourlong detour to the Kenyon bookstore in Gambier, Ohio while driving home from a music festival-- found a copy of an 18th century Chinese Zither Tutor under a clearance table there (tuning and notation for a mountain dulcimer style instrument with movable frets). Strangely enough, this obscure and wonderful book has since totally disappeared in the tottering stacks still waiting to be catalogued.

Picked up The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne tonight, as I am going to visit the House of Seven Gables in Salem, Mass, next weekend with my sister.

65 - Yeah, I'm actually putting down a book to start Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. Granted I've been plugging away at Dead Souls for a while and could use a little less Russia, but still, I'm very intrigued by what this book has to offer.

Let's see... today I picked up:

Audrey: Her Real Story by Alexander Walker
The Italian Secretary by Caleb Carr
The Source of Magic by Piers Anthony
Once... by James Herbert
A Song Flung Up to Heaven by Maya Angelou
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

all for a total of $3.75. I LOVE library sales!!

Beware The Italian Secretary, it was surprisingly bad. I was so disappointed because I loved Carr's earlier work and he seemed perfect to write a Holmes pastiche, but he cut a lot of corners and dropped a lot of common sense and knowledge about Holmses' ways and methods. Such a bummer.

>70 Bookmarque:, Bookmarque, I have to totally agree with what you just said. The book was a GREAT disappointment, and not only because I was waiting to a sequel to The angel of darkness, which, so far, has yet to come.....

Oh a follow up to Angel of Darkness would be excellent. It wasn't as strong as The Alienist, but it was miles ahead of The Italian Secretary. Maybe Carr doesn't want to become known as a series writer and finds it too limiting or something.

Today I found two books for $3 each: a British edition of The Golem's Eye by Jonathan Stroud in my favourite bookseller's bargain section, and The Hippopotamus Marsh by Pauline Gedge in one of my favourite used shops.

Bookmarque, I often thought of writing to him and ask him about a sequel. He teaches at Bard College, in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Perhaps it would not be difficult to find his e-mail address.....

Sold a few books today and added two more books to my reading list (which I speed up the chipping away process):
Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein
and
The Double by Jose Saramago... can't wait

Latest arrivals from Amazon:

Walden and Civil Disobedience by Henry Thoreau
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
The Bridge in the Jungle by B.Traven

More packages came it today!!!

One More Sunday by John D. Macdonald
Kentucky Stand by Jere Wheelwright
Settling Accounts: Drive to the East by Harry Turtledove
Settling Accounts: Return Engagement by Harry Turtledove
Settling Accounts: The Grapple by Harry Turtledove
Settling Accounts: In at the Death by Harry Turtledove

I just received from the Scholar's Bookshelf I Am: The Selected Poetry of John Clare.

In a secondhand bookstore I found:

Vlaamse dichtkunst van deze tijd, an anthology of Flemish poetry (1951);
The Penguin book of French verse, 4 : the twentieth century;
Dorothy Sayer's translation of The comedy of Dante Alighieri, the Florentine : Cantica I, Hell = L'Inferno;
Oudere gronden, a book of poems by Jacques Hamelink.

My regular bookstore had a book I ordered last week: Luigi Pirandello : Biografie van een verwisselde zoon by Andrea Camilleri.

The Careful Use of Compliments by Alexander McCall Smith -- love this series set in Scotland about an editor for a philosophy journal. Smith has a very good sense of humor.
The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Ultimate Reading List -- I can't resist reading lists.
A Killer Stitch by Maggie Sefton -- the latest installment in a knitting mystery series, which includes a pattern and a recipe.
The Creative Writing Murders by Heather Ross Miller -- local author (North Carolina) and a book club choice
Peony in Love by Lisa See -- historical fiction (author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan)
The Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke -- never read one of his, another book club selection

Attempted to edit message 80, to get touchstones to work.

Today another book I ordered last week arrived:
Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio by Pu Songling, a translation by John Minford of 104 tales from the nearly five hundred in this collection. I already have De beschilderde huid, W.L. Idema's Dutch translation of twenty-nine tales.

I didn't buy, I got it for free:

La Collezione Dantesca Tilly van de Sande-Swart by Dina Aristodemo, the catalog of an impressive Dante collection.

Baltimore, or the Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire by Mike Mignola

The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights edited by John Steinbeck mentioned in a book about book stores. Had a devil of a time finding it: 1st edition, maroon boards under DJ, gilt edges. From Dusty Books http://dustybooks.co.uk in Wales, UK of all places.

Mahu Surfer by Neil Plakcy - had no idea there was a sequel to Mahu available until I arrived at Borders with some credit to spend.

The September thread is already up at http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=19483