A New Year Means New Piles of Books - January to April 2016

What books have you acquired in the first part of 2016?

What if? Serious Scientific Answers to Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe - A Kindle special
Fields of Wrath by Mark Wheaton (a Luis Chavez book) - Free Kindle book with Prime membership on Amazon
Mycroft Holmes by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - A Kindle special
Small Gods by Terry Pratchett, cover by Joe McLaren - hardcover, birthday gift from my son.

>2 MrsLee: I got What If? as a Kindle special, too, and I already have it in hardcover and audio (though I seem to have missed cataloguing both electronic versions). It's an excellent book, and with the Kindle version, the links should be clickable. Though the cartoons probably won't look as good.

I though about getting, but ultimately passed on What If? because I have it in audio and the one thing my Kindle Paperwhite is no good for is graphics. Books I have acquired in the last 8 days:

Intertwine by Nicole Van (kindle deal)
The Watchmaker of Filigree Street (kindle deal)
Cold-Hearted Rake by Lisa Kleypas (impulse buy at Costco)
Dark Legacy by Theresa Charles, a TBSL old favorite gothic that crossed my path while browsing ebay
ROME AND THE ENVIRONS With the Plan of Rome and a Map of the Environs and 32 Engravings by Fratelli Treves, guidebook to Rome from 1905, definitely TBSL, picked up at the free book exchange.

>4 aviddiva: My husband is enjoying What if?. I put it on our tablet, but he is reading it on his small Kindle. He has my grandfather's magnifying lens (think cartoons of Sherlock Holmes for the image) and looks so funny reading it. :)

I've brought home
Heat Wave by Richard Castle
and Thirty Days Has September by Chris Stevens today from the charity shop

I've also placed an online order for some books for my Thingaversary - early but given current weather/transport conditions, the books are likely to arrive after the day (hence buying a couple in the hope of staving off the worst of the penalties!)

I've also been shopping for kindle deals, and picked up
What if?
Just kids (which I've already read)
World War Z
Two serpents rise and
Full fathom five.

And today I stopped at the Oxfam bookshop on my way to work and these three found their way into my bag:
The readers of Broken Wheel recommend
Kamikaze girls and
Jeweled fire

>7 Sakerfalcon: Have you read World War Z before? I liked it, even though I'm not the least bit into zombies.

I started the year with all good intentions, and was hoping not to add to the TBR mountain range too much, but then;

Amazon had their 12 Days of Kindle sale, and I picked up...
The Late Starters Orchestra
Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen
Moranthology
All The Light We Cannot See
The Husband's Secret
Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery
The Iceberg: A Memoir

Then I subsequently acquired...
Becoming Marta
Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep

After that, I paid a couple of trips to the library and came by...
The End of the Affair
The Narrow Road to the Deep North
Alice Bliss
Aftermath
When She Woke
Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid

So my hopes of shrinking the TBR piles in 2016 have somewhat diminished since New Year. Oops!

>7 Sakerfalcon: World War Z is nothing like the Brad Pitt movie, it was interesting take on the zombie genre. I really enjoyed it.

My bookoutlet order from the end of December arrived today. I got:
S. By Doug Dorst & J.J. Abrams
Vagabond by Bernard Cornwell
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
Blood of the Lamb by Sam Cabot
Green Hills of Africa by Ernest Hemingway

I guess the mountain grows ever taller...

>8 SylviaC:, >10 heathn: I have read it before, and liked it so much that I decided to grab it for kindle when I saw it in the sale. Like Sylvia, I don't usually read zombie books, but I do like books told in epistolary/reportage style and that convinced me to give it a try in the first place. heathn, I haven't seen the film and it doesn't really appeal to me, as it does seem to be so very different from the book.

>10 heathn: Ooo, some nice reads in there.

The first of the books I ordered for my Thingaversary has now arrived (just a few days late)

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs (which I'm pretty sure was a BB that hit at some point).

Still waiting for the others, they're in the post somewhere - they're all being dispatched separately (and one of them is still waiting for dispatch).

(editing my post rather than adding another)
The second of my ordered Thingaversary books has arrived this morning (i hadn't realised it was going to be so thin!) A Splendid Isolation: Lessons on Happiness from the Kingdom of Bhutan by Madeline Drexler. I'm really looking forward to reading this one - I hope it lives up to my hopes. I can see me slipping it in sooner rather than later, given its size.

My final Thingaversary book has finally arrived Winterstrike by Liz Williams.

>14 Peace2: I have a couple of books by Liz Williams on my tbr piles, but haven't tried them yet. If you get to her first I'll look forward to your comments!

>15 Sakerfalcon: I shall do the same in reverse! :D

So a trip out to take some things to a charity shop today, resulted in me returning with some books ... not helping the TBR pile but - there was at least one really good catch in the bunch and I was giving books another chance at survival...

Go Set A Watchmanby Harper Lee
The Owl Service by Alan Garner
Because it is my Blood by Gabrielle Zevin (having entered this into my LT list - I discovered it's the second in a series which is a bit of a shame)

I loved The Owl Service when I read it a million years ago. I wonder how it holds up.

>18 aviddiva: I re-read The Moon of Gomrath and The Weirdstone of Brisingamen in the last couple of years and they had fared relatively well, Elidor less so and this is one I can't remember at all, so I'm wondering if I missed it when I was younger, but I couldn't resist giving it a try now nonetheless.

Today was not a good day for the TBR pile, however, I shall confess to being slightly pleased with myself nonetheless. I have a soft spot (a very soft spot) for the old BBC scifi 'Blake's 7', so when I got a chance to have copies of the whole of the 'first' set of Big Finish audio book/dramatisations, I took it and so the first 6 arrived today with surviving members of the original cast.

I'm sure I'm not feeling as repentant as I should be, but I'm actually sitting here with a bit of a grin right now. Expect these to show up on my 'I've read these' in fairly short order.

I have contemplated returning to Blake's 7 but have too much fear that it would have been visited by the suck fairy so I'll be keeping an eye out to see what you think.

>21 AHS-Wolfy: I'm not sure whether you were familiar with The Syndeton Experiment and The Sevenfold Crown which if I remember rightly were both written by Barry Letts, both of which I found excessively disappointing - almost as if he didn't know the characters at all. The Big Finish productions seem to be of much higher quality writing - more like the original characters (although like the show different episodes are written by different people so quality may vary). I've actually already listened to Warship which precedes the set I've just got along with the first of this set - Fractures (I rated them four and three stars). The benefit of the audio is that there's no shaky sets and you can't see how the actors have aged! Their voices are still distinctive and recognizable, although you can hear a little difference for their maturity. The guy they have to play Orac and Zen does a good job of staying true to Peter Tuddenham's characterisation. I'm really hoping the standard remains reasonably high (there's certainly a second set of them being published already as well as The Liberator Chronicles which I've listened to the first two of - they are written slightly differently so that they're 'told' by one member of the crew with either a guest or one other interacting with them intermittently).

An unexpected visit to the bookstore meant three new books. (I wanted more, but they didn't have most of them, even though it was a big bookstore and they were all reasonably current books.)

The Brain's Way of Healing by Norman Doidge.
Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie. I wanted Ancillary Mercy, too, but they didn't have it. I'm not going to read Sword until I have Mercy as well.
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. I already read this, but I wanted a paper copy.

And something exciting happened! My husband bought a book!!! He read the one I gave him for Christmas, and now he bought one himself! It doesn't even have a tractor on the cover!

What did you give him for Christmas (sans tractor) that was so inspiring?

The Christmas book was Shift Work by Tie Domi, a hockey player autobiography. The new book is Persuasion by Arlene Dickinson, a Canadian entrepreneur and TV personality.

I have had a spurt of online book ordering, presumably a side-effect of decreased daylight hours, cold temperatures, and inactivity--or something like that. The two that have arrived so far are:

The Chalet School Encyclopaedia, Volume Three
Death and Miss Dane by Elizabeth Cadell

More will come trickling in over the next few weeks.

I came home to a couple of books on my doorstep today:

Honky Tonk Samurai by Joe R. Lansdale and
Kingfisher by Patricia A. McKillip

I baby-sat a bookstore yesterday and came home with

Blind Man's Bluff about submarine espionage, which Charlie adopted as soon as he saw it
Washington Goes to War about a sleepy Washington gearing up for WW2
The American Heiress AKA My Last Duchess, apparently

SylviaC, my Charlie loves tractors, he was driving them since a young child near Wingham, but it's hard to find thrillers about them. I found a tiny model of a tractor at Christmas, just for fun, but it turned out to be THE VERY ONE he drove, standing up, those many years ago. He also loves submarines, warships, and Lancasters but he hasn't managed to drive any of those yet.

>28 nhlsecord: Wow, you sure were lucky with that tractor! They know exactly which model is which. What is the make of Charlie's tractor? Our basement walls are lined with shelves full of toy tractors, and on the main floor, the tractors go on top of all the bookcases and cabinets.

The one I got him is a John Deere 120 but it looks like the John Deere M which is actually the very one (he had to get out his loupe to make sure). As much as Charlie loves old tractors (which we have to stop and look at in every retired farmers front yard), it is models of construction equipment that are piled up in our apartment because Charlie was a parts man all his working life for Ford tractors and then for JCB etc. equipment.

Parts Men are just like Librarians when it comes to their Parts Room.

I've come home with a few new piles since the beginning of the year, but I keep forgetting to post them! These are the ones I can remember:

Calling Dr. Laura by Nicole Georges
Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata
Rat Queens Vol. 2: The Far-Reaching Tentacles of N'Rygoth by Kurtis Wiebe
The Wicked + The Divine Vol. 3: Commercial Suicide by Kieron Gillen
Tokyo Cancelled by Rana Dasgupta
Solanin by Inio Asano
Green Rider by Kristen Britain
Rhapsody: Child of Blood by Elizabeth Haydon
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami (the three-volume paperback version)
From Girls to Grrrlz by Trina Robbins
Ody-C Vol. 1: Off to Far Ithica by Matt Fraction
Copperhead Vol. 1: A New Sherriff in Town by Jay Faerber

Today's arrivals:

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley
Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie
Everything I Know about Love I Learned from Romance Novels by Sarah Wendell

So I donated a couple of boxes of books to a local school (and a small box of more grown up stuff to the teacher I know there), this is part of my rehoming to better places project. I'm not culling merely redirecting things I have no use for any longer - they weren't amazing books with great memories or fantastic illustrations or anything like that, just run of the mill kids fare and so rather than leaving them to gather dust, I've passed them on to generate a love of books in the next generation while simultaneously making room for some more books in my house.

So headed off to the charity store after dropping them off and came back with...
A Darkness at Sethanon by Raymond Feist (the next one in the series and missing from the current collection)
Lirael by Garth Nix (again I'm trying to complete the set)
The Gold Falcon and The Spirit Stone by Katharine Kerr (more trying to complete sets)
The Riven Kingdom by Karen Miller
The Great Writers' Library: The Romantic Poets
Down the Bright Stream by B.B.

and through the post arrived

Captain America by Dan Jurgens by Dan Jurgens

Actually now I look back at it everything was to add to a set... that makes me feel less bad about adding to the looming Mt TBR.

Today in my mailbox:

Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami - I read this last year, and liked it well enough to buy my own copy. The copy I read last year was called The Briefcase, but I chose the British edition because the title is so much better.

>34 SylviaC: That is a lovely book. Definitely a keeper.

>35 Sakerfalcon: It was on your recommendation that I read it. Thank you!

>34 SylviaC: I loved Strange Weather in Tokyo. That atmosphere she created really got me.

This is like Christmas! In today's mail:

Five Windows by D. E. Stevenson - It was just reissued after being out-of-print for many, many years. One of her best books.

As a long-standing member of the ISPCB (I know I'm missing an initial, but all I can think of is "Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Books, ah, added the "I" for International), anyway, as a kind of ditsy member, I couldn't help myself at the library today. They are culling their shelves apparently, for on the FOTL shelves were poetry works and tons of plays published in the early 1900s. I couldn't save the plays, really I'm going to have to be creative to fit the following on my shelves, but I had to save these.

Out Where the West Begins: and Other Western Verses - by Arthur Chapman, published in 1917

West of Powder River: Tales of the Far West told in Narrative Verse - by "Powder River" Jack H. Lee, published in 1933, a First Edition with a very cool cover

Sonnets to a Red-Haired Lady (By a Gentleman with a Blue Beard) and Famous Love Affairs by Don Marquis, published in 1922, also a First Edition with drawings by Stuart Hay

The Chinese Nightingale and Other Poems by Vachel Lindsay, published in 1917, I bought this for the cover, which is lovely and has a dragon on it!

The Picnic and Other Inimitable Stories by Gerald Durrell, and author I think I have heard praised here, but have yet to read.

The Mockery Bird by Gerald Durrell

Running with the Bulls: My Years with the Hemingways by Valerie Hemingway, just because it will either be interesting or horrible, but for .50 I'm willing to take the chance.

I passed up a biography on Harper Lee, then arrived home to find that she had died today. Wish I had bought it.

I had been managing quite well to not acquire so many books recently. Then Friday happened. From the library book sale trolley I got:
The end of night which looks very interesting.
Then on my way home I decided to go to Forbidden Planet, and found the following:
Vision in silver Anne Bishop
Kingfisher Patricia McKillip (these two were my reason for going to the shop)
Karen Memory Elizabeth Bear
The seventh bride T. Kingfisher (These were on my wishlist but I didn't expect to buy them just yet
Myth-understandings anthology of fantasy by British women writers
Real unreal Best American fantasy volume 3
Cast in honor by Michelle Sagare (these last three were only 99p each and it would have been wrong not to buy them at that price).

Found a pile (does 10 constitute a pile?) of books by Clifford D. Simak at one of the used book places I visit from time to time. Was originally going to just pick up a few but couldn't decide which ones to get so ended up with all of them as they were only £1 each:

City
Destiny Doll
Enchanted Pilgrimage
The Fellowship of the Talisman
A Heritage of Stars
Mastodonia
Shakespeare's Planet
So Bright the Vision
They Walked Like Men
Time and Again

>41 AHS-Wolfy: Ten is definitely a pile. As for buying all of them, it is always better to err on the side of caution. So you did the right thing!

And the last of the books I ordered:

The Empty World by D. E. Stevenson - I've been wanting my own copy of this for years. I finally settled for a large print version, since any others that are out there are ridiculously expensive.

There is a book sale coming up in a nearby city, but judging from the weather forecast for the next few days, it is unlikely that I'll get there.

>41 AHS-Wolfy: I remember loving his City, and I plan to re-read it at some point.

My Thingaversary order arrived today, so I just barely made it in before the month ended. Here are the five that I got for my five years, and am considering my purchase of Saga, Vol 1 from earlier this month as my one to grow on.

William Shakespeare's The Clone Army Attacketh by Ian Doescher
The Peripheral by William Gibson
Alias Hook by Lisa Jensen
The House of Small Shadows by Adam Nevill
The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler

I thought the cover for Small Shadows was too creepy and eerie to pass up.

Whoop! I just discovered that I am to receive an Early Reviewer copy of the new Laurie R. King novel, The Murder of Mary Russell! I still love this series.

Well I couldn't pass this up, could I? In honor of one of our founders, I purchased on the Kindle special today, Clammed Up by Barbara Ross. Looks like a cozy mystery, so I don't have high hopes of loving it, but one never knows. :)

And today the Kindle special brought me The Paris Architect by Charles Belfoure. It sounded different enough from the many other WWII stories I have read to give it a try.

Yesterday a relatively obscure work by Carol Shields arrived - Happenstance, however I might have received the wrong item. It says it's Happenstance and that it's Carol Shields, but the description on the flap just isn't the same. Hm.

Tripped over this one and then it followed me home Tanglewreck by Jeannette Winterson

I came away from the library sale book trolley with Games creatures play. I've read this anthology already but enjoyed enough of the stories to want this copy when I saw it.

Oh dear, I was pursued down the street by today's 'acquisitions'

Dolphin Song and The White Giraffe by Lauren St John (first two parts in a series that I already have 3 and 4 of)
I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga
Talking about Jane Austen in Baghdad by Bee Rowlatt
Oath of Fealty by Elizabeth Moon (thought this was part of a series that I already had a later title of - it's actually a different series *sigh*)

That on top of two borrowed books from the library - A Particular Eye for Villainy by Ann Granger and Pass the Butterworms by Tim Cahill

And I thought I'd done fairly well - but turns out I was the last one to post here and it was only 10 days ago *sigh* I really stand zero chance of reducing the TBR pile. These three were given to me by my sister who was in the midst of tidying her bookshelf.

The Mayan Prophecies: Unlocking the Secrets of a Lost Civilisation by Adrian Gilbert and Maurice M Cotterell
When the Sky Fell: In Search of Atlantis by Rand Flem-Ath and Rose Flem-Ath
The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh

I've picked up a couple of ARCs, but mostly a mix of trade paperbacks and hardcovers, ebooks and audiobooks at a rate of about 5 times faster than I could possibly read them. So far this month I've picked up:

audio
The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi
Watership Down by Richard Adams
Rise of Empire: Riyria Revelations, Volume 2 by Michael Sullivan

ebook
King of the Bastards by Steven Shrewsbury and Brian Keene
The Dead Season by Christobel Kent
House of Smoke by J F F Freedman

Trade PB/Hardcover
Hell's Gate by Bill Schutt
Fool Me Once by Harlan Coben
Close Your Eyes by Michael Robotham
The Mortal Tally by Sam Sykes

A couple of Kindle books purchased mostly for my mom on the Kindle, but always available to me:

Crab Bait by Carrie Enge
Postcards from Nam by Uyen Nicole Duong - I'm particularly interested in this one, and if it has pictures of the postcards, even more so, but then I will have to set it up on mom's ipad to read instead of her Kindle.

I should probably unsubscribe to the Audible and Kindle specials. Today from Audible for $1.99
Keep Moving: and Other Tips and Truths about Aging by Dick Van Dyke

>56 MrsLee: I got that one, too!

Found, this morning, outside a neighbour's house, in a box of books consisting mostly of textbooks and old computer manuals:
• My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
• Minister Without Portfolio by Michael Winter
Neither book looks like it has ever been read!

Had a couple of great looking ARCs show up on my doorstep today.

Fatal Thunder by Larry Bond and
Collecting the Dead by Spencer Kope

Really looking forward to these!