What did YOU buy today? Message Board

Read it and loved it in the summer of 1998, but now I finally own it! ... Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon.

(There are more, but that should get the ball rolling, right?)

Excellent thread idea, rikker, but it's only 11:10am here in Tenn. and I haven't bought anything yet this morning, but the day's still young. Nevertheless, the postman should have some surprises for me from the UK this afternoon.

The last book I bought was Practical Chocolate (for 50¢, she bragged!). If the insane heat doesn't keep me inside, I plan to visit the Newberry Library book sale tomorrow, so watch out for what could be a very long post!

Hmm, that touchstone didn't work. Trying again: Practical Chocolate.

lilithcat wrote: "so watch out for what could be a very long post!"

Bring it on!

A local bookstore--one of those ones with the used books in the basement--had an "all used books $1" sale last week. I think I acquired ~25 books from it.

Some highlights: A Fine and Pleasant Misery, Mansfield Park, Summerland, Searching for Bobby Fischer, The Temple of Dawn...

I wrote: "I think I acquired ~25 books from it."

Not to say that it wouldn't have been 100 if I could swing that. :)

First of all, I have to say that I absolutely love that our number one weighted shared book right now is Portrait of an Obsession - how utterly appropriate!

I picked up a few remainders at another bookstore this morning on my way to work (at a bookstore): Schott's Sporting and Gaming Miscellany, A Perfect Red (a history of cochineal), The World of Gerard Mercator, and Henry Adams and the Making of America. Will catalog and add them to my library (but that'll have to wait until after work.

Only one item purchased in the last twenty-four hours. That's Spiritual Traditions for the Contemporary Church but earlier in the week I bought His Majesty's Dragon which is science fiction. The Spiritual Traditions is self explanatory, isn't it?

Sorry, that touchstone didn't work because I must not have put the title in quite correctly. One more -- that's Spiritual Traditions for the Contemporary Church

Sorry, that touchstone didn't work because I must not have put the title in quite correctly. One more -- that's Spiritual Traditions for the Contemporary Church. If it's of any interest to anyone, the second chapter is about the activity of Lectio Divina or "Divine Reading".

Well, day before yesterday, but nonetheless: Edgar Allan Poe & the Juke-box by Elizabeth Bishop and Mother, Speak to Us of War by Marjorie Agosin, so a poetry day. We'll see if I get anything today.

From eBay, a copy of The Moving Toyshop which got mentioned on the British & Irish Crime Fiction group here and reminded me that I didn't own a copy...

Bought the Oxford dictionary of science. Second time I've had to buy it. Hopefully this one won't walk away too!! :)

Bought a secondhand copy of Japanese for Busy People I, to add to all the other Japanese-for-beginners books that I'm not reading as much as I should...

Newberry Library book sale: Part I

Textiles & Lacquer
Floral Art of Japan
Venice, Frail Barrier, Richard De Combray
The Shape of Content, Ben Shahn
Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction, Patricia Highsmith
A Member of the Family: Gay Men Write About Their Families, John Preston (editor)
Dr. Kookie, You're Right, Mike Royko
Aesop's Human Zoo
One Finger Too Many, Alfred Brendel
Blake's Job, S. Foster Damon (commentary)

Newberry Library book sale: Part II

Joan of Arc, Jules Michelet
Revolving Pictures, Ernest Nister
Heavy Words Lightly Thrown, Chris Roberts
The Leto Bundle, Marina Warner
Letters of Eric Gill
The Primary Colors, Alexander Theroux
The Secondary Colors, Alexander Theroux
Letters of Mistress Henley Published by her Friend, Isabelle de Charriere
Wandering, Lu Xun
The Adultery Department, Paul Bryers

Last, but certainly not least:

Pandora's Box: A 3-Dimensional Celebration of Greek Mythology, Christos Kondeatis
Transforming Vision: Writers on Art, Edward Hirsch
The Old Man and the Bureaucrats, Mircea Eliade
Woman Between Mirrors, Helena Parente Cunha
An Architect in Italy, Caroline Mauduit
Young Goodman Brown, Nathaniel Hawthorne
James, Fabulous Feline, Harriet Hahn
The London Ritz Book of Afternoon Tea, Helen Simpson
Sometimes I Dream in Italian, Rita Ciresi
Buoyant Billions, Farfetched Fables, Shakes versus Shav, George Bernard Shaw
Garbo: Her Story, Antoni Gronowicz

Well, rikker did say "bring it on"!

Excellent! :) Sadly for my bookbuying and cheapskate tendencies, I missed the local library sale just two weeks ago. Don't know when the next will be...

Lilithcat - my mother might say you'd made out like a bandit. :) Wonderful.

May I get to the next sale here, myself!

I'm thrilled to hear you've got a copy of The Moving Toyshop coming, BoPeep. :)

Ooh, I like this one.

Very pleased to say that I found a complete set of the Chronicles of Narnia for $7 ($1 apiece) - publication order. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is book #1, like it should be!

I work for a book wholesaler so I get a tremendous discount on books :) I can also buy used library books for $1 a piece. I've only worked there for 9 months so I expect to accumulate quite a few books soon. I do have 3 on order right now...

Today I picked up a copy of That Devil Wilkes by Raymond William Postgate at work ... had to buy it because I added a bunch to my "hold" pile there, and I have an unofficial rule that my hold stack must fit on one (relatively narrow) shelf vertically. The Postgate was today's overflow, so I either had to buy it or put it back. The choice was clear. Not until I got home did I realize that the copy was inscribed by the author (always a bonus!).

The Ugly Little Boy, Nine Coaches Waiting (which completes a collection of the Stewart's books I care about), and Ghost from the Grand Banks, for the munificent sum of $5.05 at the local used bookstore.

The Moving Toyshop arrived this morning and although I've read it more than a dozen times I think I'm just going to have to read it again this afternoon. :-)

Way too many books today. It's always bad when I get off work early... So my "sins" today were:
The great book of amber by Roger Zelazny
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Joust by Mercedes Lackey
Fight club by Chuck Palahniuk
Der Teufel von Mailand by Martin Suter
Wyrd sisters and Pyramids by Terry Pratchett
God, give me more time!

A fine haul, Thalia.

Yes indeed, an excellent haul, Thalia. I hope you like Fight Club.. ol' Chuck is my friend's uncle, and he was born in the same town I grew up in--never met him, but I feel like I've got to pimp his work. :) Needless to say, it's twisted. And the movie is probably the best movie adaptation of a book ever, for me. Such a great movie, even though it's substantially different from the book.

I have some acquisitions I'll post about later today when I have some more time. Two P.G. Wodehouse that I ordered have arrived.

Hey, lilithcat, I just acquired Heavy Words Lightly Thrown last week. Oh, the small coincidences of life: I'd never heard of the book, and now I hear about it twice in a short amount of time.

Yesterday's acquisitions: The Fire Rose by Mercedes Lackey and Angel Sanctuary, vol.14 by Kaori Yuki.

LouisBranning and rikker: well, thank you. I hope I get around reading all of them soon. I keep buying 10 books or more a week and only get half of them read at the most (if they're not 1000 pages long...)
I love Palahniuk and I've read several of his books, just never Fight club although I have seen the movie. I look forward to finally reading it and it'll probably be the first of today's acquisitions that I'll read.

I had a long day of travel from Boston last week and picked up a few books for the journey:

What's the Matter With Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott
Why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: and Other Conversations about Race by Beverly Daniel Tatum

Can't resist the books with the colons, I guess...

Then, yesterday (probably because I spent so much in Boston), I got a $25 amazon.com reward certificate from my credit card company, with which I bought:

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
Black Water and The Rivers of Zadaa by D.J. MacHale
Miles Errant by Lois McMaster Bujold

All of which are parts of fantasy/sf series...

I guess I can't help buying books in themes.

Today I had errands in the state capital (that sounds so fancy), so I stopped by their local Goodwill. For 50-99 cents per book, I acquired:

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

Now and Then: From Coney Island to Hereby Joseph Heller

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

by Charles Dickens

..and the two by Wodehouse I mentioned earlier are Cocktail Time and The Cat-Nappers. :)

Last bunch of books I got were art books at artist signings at San Diego Comic Con. All were signed and I love them.

- The Saddest Place on Earth: The Art of Camille Rose Garcia
- Mark Ryden Fushigi/Mysterious Circus Art Book
- Haunted Paradise: The Art of Glenn Barr
- Convergence: Damon Soule, David Chong Lee, Mars-1, Brett Amory, Nome Edonna And Oliver Vernon

Argh.. capital = capitol. We *really* need editing, as everyone and their anthromorphic dog has pointed out already.

Argh.. capital = capitol. We *really* need editing, as everyone and their anthropomorphic dog has pointed out already.

B&N were having a sale so I got a few books fer cheap (2 for $1 each and 1 for $6, plus all for an additional 10% off).

Books picked up today:
- How to Start a Business in California (Smartstart Series (Entrepreneur Press).)
- The Elder Gods
- Enterprise Java 2, J2EE 1.3 Complete
- Macromedia Flash MX: The Complete Reference

Three 'easy readers' today, for my son who is racing through the series like a child three years older... And looking at them myself, they seem really quite fun, which makes a change from some of the dreary texts that pass for 'picture book' texts. The Hairy-Scary Monster caught my eye in the shop, and after reading the first few pages we want to know what happens next! Alas, it will have to wait until after nap-time... We also came home with a new-to-us Richard Scarry. No one can have too many of those.

Books and music are my spending weakness. They're my weakness. This weekend I bought:
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco
Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
All He Ever Wanted by Anita Shreve
The Falls by Joyce Carol Oates
Cane River by Lalita Tademy
Empire Falls by Richard Russo
Runaway by Alice Munro

Having finished His Majesty's Dragon, last night I went out and purchased Throne of Jade, the immediate sequel. Thoroughly enjoyable summer action/adventure reading!

Here's what I bought in the last month (July):

Armadale by Wilkie Collins
We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro
The Gunpowder Plot by Antonia Fraser
Mr. Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood
Rough Crossings by Simon Schama
Henry James: Selected Stories by Henry James
Basil by Wilkie Collins
No Name by Wilkie Collins
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
501 Spanish Verbs
Collins Spanish Dictionary
Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
Brida by Paulo Coelho
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos
Affinity by Sarah Waters
Night Watch by Sarah Waters
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Supernatural Murders by Jonathan Goodman
Sugar Rush by Julie Burchill
Jigs and Reels by Joanne Harris
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
Wild Girls: Paris, Sappho, and Art: The Lives and Loves of Natalie Barney and Romaine Brooks by Diana Souhami
White Oleander by Janet Fitch
Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue
She by H. Rider Haggard
Henry VIII: King and Court by Alison Weir
Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
Arthurian Romances by Chretien de Troyes
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

I've just now bought a used copy of José Saramago's "A caverna" (English: The Cave) in the original Portuguese for a paltry $10 AUD.

In today's mail from Amazon, a copy of Jeff Hoke's gorgeous The Museum of Lost Wonder, which bills itself as "a thought-provoking blend of quantum physics, metaphysics, graphic novel, and philosophy, all in the coolest activity book ever."

Picked up some cheap remainders: The Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic and Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett, and A Model World and Other Stories by Michael Chabon. :)

Sigh... why do I keep buying when I have so many still to read?

I wish I had that same problem sometimes, rikker. Out of the 900-odd books in my collection, there were only 20 I hadn't read, so I'm always looking for something to read, always.

rikker, I'm with you on that question! And yet ... I just picked up a few I had bought on credit from the shop where I work:

- In the Presence of Nature by David Scofield Wilson, an examination/joint biography of early American naturalists Jonathan Carver, John Bartram, and Mark Catesby.

- Natural History in America from Catesby to Rachel Carson by Wayne Hanley.

- Elegy by W.S. by Donald W. Foster, an attributional study in which Foster makes the case that Shakespeare wrote a previously uncredited funeral elegy.

rikker, this group thing has been awful for my budget. I just bought Pratchett's The Color of Magic (why no touchstone for that, I wonder?), a 1977 or thereabouts edition of 1984, and Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief.

I so know what you mean... :) I've learned of a bunch of new books and authors to check out, and been convinced to finally get around to many others that I've been meaning to for a while (like Pratchett).

Good choices you have there, though--I'm right in the middle of 1984 on audiobook, and soon I should get through the Colour of Magic, too. (The touchstone demands a British spelling.. it must go by the work name, since there are plenty of copies in the system with the American spelling.)

Shoulda tried the British spelling, but the book's cover has the American variant, so...

I don't think I've ever read 1984. I saw the film in high school, and of course references abound, particularly in the blogosphere. The store also had a copy of Down and Out in Paris and London, but I restrained myself. I've heard the latter acclaimed as one of the best recountings of poverty in England since Dickens.

Another time.

I recently picked up a copy of Down and Out in Paris and London for a few cents. I read the first chapter (sordid enough) that night, and have sadly not picked it up since. There's time... or so I hope.

i recently got a copy of borges and the eternal orang-utans by luis fernando verissimo, primarily because i was intrigued by the title. the reviews are good; so far (the first chapter of 7), the english translation by margaret costa is very lyrical and well done. also bought another copy of pico iyer's tropical classical because my old copy was whisked away by a friend to london (he came back from the trip without it. sigh.)

will try the touchstone again: borges and the eternal orangutans

I've just got Stephen Baxter's Emperor but haven't stated reading it yet. I am still reading Kit Reed's The Baby Merchant which I bought a few weeks ago.

Hi!
I order most of my books through a online bookclub. Today's catch:
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
A is for Alibi by Sue Grafton
B is for Burglar by Sue Grafton
C is for Corpse by Sue Grafton
The Handmaid's tale by Margaret Atwood

Now I just have to wait :)

In today's mail from Amazon, a copy of Marisha Pessl's debut novel Special Topics in Calamity Physics.

Ordered yesterday on amazon:

Ask the Dust by John Fante
A Time to Be Born by Dawn Powell
Star of the Sea by Joseph O'Connor

Scored at Moe's and the Berkeley Public Library

James Blaylock's The Elfin Ship

John Le Carre's The Little Drummer Girl

and, a book I've read before, for my "ironic" pile:

Clive Cussler's Shock Wave

At the B&N $1 sale table, I hit the jack-pot with a copy of Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August, one of the highest on a list of books I wanted to collect on the Great War (I say, citing another of the pile). Does anyone here have Tuchman's 'prequel,' The Proud Tower? Is it worth getting, also? (You know, with all the money I saved on this one?)

(Ah, apologies. I meant The Great War and Modern Memory; it had appeared to pick up.)

Cao Xuequin's The Warning Voice: The Story of the Stone. It's volume three in the series (of 5) and reading the series is like climbing a slow gentle mountain.

Er, don't you think it's a little early in the morning to be acquiring books since my clock says it's only 7:00 am?! :-)

I can't help sharing, though, so I'll let you know that the last books I bought this week were:

The Footprints of God by Greg Iles - I've read two of his other books and will read his works although I rarely like to pick up a mystery

The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls - an autobiography a friend of mine had to read for a book club. She liked it and recommended it to me. She warned me that the family in this book is severely dysfunctional.

Stolen Lives by Malika Oufkir Oufkir - from my wish list. I've wanted to read this book since finishing Price of Honor: Muslim Women Lift the Veil of Silence on the Islamic World by Jan Goodwin.

I just did my semi-regular trawl of local charity shops and came home with:
The Breadmaker Bible, March (duplicate since I lent my other out - for 80p I might as well let the borrower keep it), A Portrait of Jane Austen, The Queen and I and The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole (which will not 'touchstone' properly) in hardback (I have them in paperback already but they're growing battered - AM is over 20 years old and very well-read now - and these were both first editions so I couldn't resist), The Talk Of The Town by Ardal O'Hanlon, Life of Pi (can't believe I didn't have a copy before now), a new-ishTom Sharpe (The Midden), The Promise of Happiness by Justin Cartwright, My Life In Orange, Thinks... by David Lodge, The Queen of Subtleties by Suzannah Dunn.

And we bought a First Counting book this morning, having decided that our huge stock of 'learn to read' books were being a little unfair to the maths&science half of the family...

So this morning it was the local Salvation Army. I had no cash on me, only the coins from my car ash tray, so I'll have to go back to get the $1 decent hardcover of Dickens' Bleak House with illustrations by Edward Gorey.. but with the buck or so that I had, I got Deliverance by James Dickey, Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories Volume II and The Figure in the Shadows because I loved John Bellairs as a kid, but I have never owned one of his books.

Stopped by the Boston Public Library's book sale this morning - got a few things that will go in to the store for credit; the only thing for me was a copy of An Incomplete Education that looks amusing.

I went to my favorite used bookstore, Half Price Books, and picked up two by Mary Wesley, The Chamomile Lawn and Part of the Furniture. I also picked up The Silent Angel by Heinrich Boll, The Book Borrower by Alice Mattison and Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald.

In today's mail from Amazon UK, a copy of Kate Atkinson's new novel One Good Turn: a Jolly Murder Mystery.

Actually I'm trying NOT to buy a book today !

BUT...........if I did it would be "Little John" by Howard Owen. Used on Amazon.

Off to Amazon to try and NOT buy a book.

Sounds like many of you are doing marvelously well. As for myself....

No, I shouldn't be buying books, either; but I ordered a remaindered copy of Philip Kerr's March Violets, which I've wanted for years, with a great new cover by Penguin Non-Classics... 74 cents new.

For 95 cents (I have a 10% discount card) at Barnes & Noble, I picked up a hardback copy of Somersault by Kenzaburo Oe this evening.

I wasn't going to buy anything today. I deliberately stayed away from Women & Children First's used book sale. But I had to return some books to the library, and while I was there, I naturally browsed their book sale rack. Christmas Traditions was the result (not to mention a reminder that next Saturday is their used book sale - what was that about good intentions?)

Since my amazon order won't be here in time for my long plan travels, I picked up a few things yesterday from WaldenBooks (this time, the theme is "social science):

Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream by Barbara Ehrenreich
Stupid White Men by Michael Moore
Give Me a Break! by John Stossel

Also, am just finishing What's the Matter with Kansas? and was hoping to start Alec Baldwin Doesn't Love Me, but that may have to wait until I get back.

Eurydice (Msg 56) -- Yes, The Proud Tower is well worth getting. It's an era that really doesn't get enough attention from popular historians today (who just keep churning out more and more mediocre books on the Revolutionary War period), and Tuchman's approach does it justice. By the way, if you're collecting books on the Great War, I picked up a set on ebay I'd recommend that included Edith Wharton's Fighting France and John Reed's The War in Eastern Europe. The set has five books in it, and is a great contemporary and more journalistic view of the war.

Wandered into Borders and bought Fiasco by Thomas Ricks.

A_musing: Excellent - thank you. I'll add The Proud Tower to my reading list, and keep an eye out for the other two. Thankfully, I'm not in a great hurry; but they're books I'd like to have.

A few more books today.

Gwyneth Jones's Phoenix Café as I already have and have read (quite a while ago) the other two books in the trilogy White Queen And North Wind.

Also a first edition Valentine Pontifex by Silverberg.

I just purchased Tropic of Cancer and had to fight off the urge to buy Under the Roofs of Paris. I don't even know if I like Henry Miller that much either. Tropic of Cancer is an experiment...

I need to buy some more books now, as I'm on vacation at my parents' house and only brought 5 books. Turned out I brough the wrong Harry Potter book, and one of the others was in a very uncomfortable style (no paragraphs! Not even for dialogue), so I couldn't be bothered.
I've already finished 2 of the others + one more (Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen) that I bought yesterday.
Now I'm down to my last one... I'll probably have to get a bike or something to get to a store tomorrow.
The bookstores around here are pretty bad though, hardly anything decent and terrible prices on both Norwegian and English books. I did a calculation based on the current rates, and the cheapest books I can hope to find here would cost $15 for English ones and $15-30 for translations! And that's not even hard-cover. I usually shop online and get half the price, but there's no time for that now..

Breaking out a new thread, otherwise this will grow without end. Very much like a library, but still.

Perhasp you should divide it into weeks...much like the "What are you reading today?" thread.

There's a bug that's preventing me from creating a new thread, so here's what I meant to post:

On Sunday I found myself in Callicoon NY for a late lunch. It's a tiny town, just a handful of storefronts, and the kind of place I'd usually hurry past. But I knew my gf would want to take a look around, so I asked the waitress if there were any bookstores.

An hour later, we left town, with these in the back seat:

Proust - Samuel Beckett. One of the few Beckett items I don't own.

Sunday of Life (tr. of Le Dimanche de la vie) - Raymond Queneau
The flight of Icarus. Translated by Barbara Wright) - Raymond Queneau
I have a general interest in OuLiPo, and I liked We Always Treat Women Too Well

The nude - Kenneth Clark.
How Proust Can Change Your Life - Alain De Botton.
Two books mentioned in Alison Bechdel's Fun Home.

Three by Peter Handke - Peter Handke.
I liked A Moment of True Feeling.

Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray.
We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson.
Orlando: A Biography - Virginia Woolf.
Three authors new to my shelf.

Musical form and musical performance - Edward T. Cone.
Essays on music - Alfred Einstein
Vindications : essays on romantic music - Deryck Cooke
The language of music - Deryck Cooke
Music on Deaf Ears: Musical Meaning, Ideology, Education (Music and Society) - Lucy Green
New Grove Wagner (Composer Biography Series) - John Deathridge
Always interested in books on music.

Most of these were $2, but only a few showed signs of having been read.

(Couldn't get touchstones to work on all of these, alas.)

Yes, I got to do some shopping today! Thanks to my mum visiting grandma, who happens to live within walking distance of a bookstore.

My catch:
Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Portrait of a Killer by Patricia Cornwell
Kvinnen som klede seg naken for sin elskede by Jan Wiese

That should do for the rest of my vacation. I spent $45 and half of the books were on sale..

I have no idea if those touchstones will work, some of them says "loading".

Good night =)

Got a package today from powells.com, including:

To the North by Elizabeth Bowen (recommended by several friends who are mad Bowen-readers),
Quartet by Jean Rhys,
Nightwood by Djuna Barnes,
Theatre Audiences by Susan Bennett (because FedEx annihilated my old copy),
and...
Critical Theory and Performance.

I've ordered from half.ebay.com Big Book of Quilt Blocks by Lynette Jensen

Here is what I picked up at the thrift store where are the paperbacks are 25 cents and hardbacks 50 cents:

Culpepper's Color Herbal
Prescription for Natural Cures

Those Fascinating Paper Dolls

A Realistic HO Layout For Beginners

Making & Painting Victorian Birdhouses

Christmas Ornaments to Make

The Ultimate Weight Solution

kaykwilts: A Realistic HO Layout For Beginners

Oh dear...is that from circa 1961? I may have read it when it was current!

Today I also bought

England the autobiography by Lewis-Stempel, Jon
The London Underworld in the Victorian Period: Authentic First-Person Accounts by Beggars, Thieves and Prostitutes: v. 1 by Henry Mayhew

Yesterday I bought:

Soul Kitchen: A Novel by Poppy Z. Brite
What We Do is Secret by Kief Hillsbery
While England Sleeps by David Leavitt

A group for self torture?? Oh, let me see what I bought today, I only had 140 books at home to be read!!!
:op

Today I ordered from Amazon:
The Cat Who Could Read Backwards the 1st in Lilian Jackson Braun series

This was an add on to the previous order:
A Question of Love by Isabel Wolff
Be my Baby by Zoe Barnes

At the weekend I bought A Special Relationship by Douglas Kennedy, the portuguese edition.

Please stop me!! ;o)

Yesterday it was a few classics at $1 in paperback..

Emma by Stephen King... just kidding, you know I meant Jane Austen
The Stranger by Albert Camus (my old one went to shreds)
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

The Jeeves Omnibus (vol. 1), The Lore of Averages, The Call of the Weird, The Granny Book, The Walpole Orange, six educational workbooks, seven picture books, two learn-to-write books, one board book, and A Pony And His Partner.

In addition, my son got another 10 picture books but they're at Granny's so I can't catalogue them!

I just took an old post whose touchstones hadn't registered, clicked the 'edit' icon and resubmitted. And it worked!

Grunin - yes, I can do that now. But I had to edit yesterday's message in the first place precisely because the 'missing' touchstone I originally put in broke all the rest. :-)

ISTR there's a 12-24hr delay on books that are entered being available for touchstones, something to do with the data for them being drawn from the slaves rather than the master, or somesuch. So I need to wait for night-time US-time for my data to catch up!

It's bit of a hit and miss to find anything interesting from used bookstores here in Finland - especially from the ones in this part of the country. The selection of English books is extremely limited: usually no more than fifty or so. I just bought fifteen books from one bookstore today, mostly by authors that I hadn't even heard of before. Oh well, at least this time I also managed to find two that I really wanted: Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins (I read Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas few years ago and remember liking it a lot), and A Shilling for Candles by Josephine Tey.

Other moderately interesting ones:

G is for Gumshoe by Sue Grafton. Too bad that I don't have any other books by her. Probably need to get more of them before I start reading that series.

You Will Never Be The Same by Cordwainer Smith. Turned out to be somewhat rare...

Friday by Robert A. Heinlein. Hmm. I'm pretty familiar with his works; how come I haven't heard of this one before...?

I have to say that I envy you who live - fe. - close to Powell's. -_-;

Andemon said, "It's bit of a hit and miss to find anything interesting from used bookstores here in Finland - especially from the ones in this part of the country. The selection of English books is extremely limited: usually no more than fifty or so."

Perhaps that explains why I frequently have people in Finland signing up for my bookrays. Have you thought of joining BookCrossing in which books are sometimes simply mailed from person to person in bookrays or bookrings?

For more information, see

http://www.bookcrossing.com/mybookshelf

and

http://www.bookcrossing.com/forum/20

One BookCrossing member, mrsordonez, keeps a list of all the currently traveling books.

http://pages.slu.edu/student/webbla/openrings.html

Hope this makes acquiring books in English a bit easier for you.

Ok, so the latest books I bought were these:

Birdgirl and the man who followed the sun by Velma Wallis
Sonja, bessoniza, son by Inna Bulgakova
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Iliad by Homer

Any questions or comments?

Tom's Midnight Garden, Charlotte's Web, Noughts and Crosses, Troy, 10 lb Penalty, and a Delia Smith appear to have followed me home today... *whistles and looks innocent*

Picked up the manga Kingdom Hearts vol 4 yesterday as part of my Disney obsession. Good adaptation of the video game, especially for people that would never touch a video game with a 70 foot pole. Though they should.

My car drove itself (with me in it) to my local used book store today where I came face to face with a used copy of a Kenzaburo Oe book for $3. I bought it. It's The Silent Cry.

The Lord of the Flies, three 18/19th century reprints, True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole, and Mr Messy today. No prizes for guessing which one has already been read four times (aloud, too).

So, I'm not exactly a huge Stephen King fan, but I impulsively bid the starting bid amount ($14.99) on an ebay lot of 35 hardcover King books, and... well... nobody else bid on them. So I now have like 35 1000-page books to read. Oy vey!

Woah. How much was shipping??

It was $30, working out to about $1.25 per book. A bit more than I should've spent, but the books are beautiful and I plan to delve into them as soon as I can... might as well start at the beginning with Carrie! (Since it's a slim one and all.)

Also, I've now officially cut off my book budget for the foreseeable future... we'll see how long that lasts.

cinnamon-tree: Heart of Darkness has provoked many interesting commentaries. After you read it through, look some of them up, especially Chinua Achebe (whom I disagree with, but maybe you won't).

Wanderlust_Lost: I had never heard of Henry Mayhew before, but his name seemed familiar -- and then I realized that Richard Mayhew, the protagonist of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, is obviously named after Henry, in homage.

Another author to look into...

In today's mail, from a bookseller in Portland, Ore., an as-new, signed 1st ed of Ivan Doig's 1993 memoir Heart Earth.

I'm in Alaska and recently discovered Powells.com, so to qualify for the free-shipping-when-you-spend-$50, I bought:

Comanche Moon, McMurtry
Dead Man's Walk, McMurtry
Streets of Laredo, McMurtry (I just finished Lonesome Dove - go figure)
Monsignor Quixote, Graham Greene (read Don Quixote last spring, so go figure, again)
The Thurber Carnival, James Thurber
My Brilliant Career, Miles Franklin
The Tain, Thomas Kinsella
The Scarlet Pimpernel, Orczy
Mysticism, Evelyn Underhill

That and a beer should get me through the day.

I visited Half Price Books yesterday evening and came home with The Essential Tales of Chekhov, edited by Richard Ford, The Collected Stories by Clare Boylan, and two books by mary wesley: An Imaginative Experience, and A Sensible Life.

Today, at the Strand:

Contemporary Anthology of Music by Women
Schelomo, rhapsodie hebraïque. Version pour violoncelle et piano, by Ernest Bloch

A successful day at my branch library's used book sale:
The Princess Casamassima, Henry James
Hiroshima Notes, Kenzaburo Oe
The Essential Koran
Keeping Passover
Christmas in America: A History
Sweeney Astray: A Version from the Irish, Seamus Heaney
The wasp in a wig : a "suppressed" episode of Through the looking-glass and what Alice found there
Blood from a Stone, Donna Leon
Swordspoint: a novel, Ellen Kushner
Tales from the Arabian Nights, Andrew Lang
Unlocking the air and other stories, Ursula K. LeGuin
Knickerbocker's History of New York, Washington Irving
A Writer's Diary: Being Extracts from the Diary of Virginia Woolf

Today's trip to B&N yeilded

The Ultimate History of BMW
The Bone Collector - hey it was $5 and I like Deaver
This Spectred Isle: A Journey Through Haunted England - I love Simon Marsden's Photography
The Blood-dimmed Tide
and
The Night Listener - because the movie preview looks good

Wow - lilithcat, you did marvelously.

My purchases are Samuel Johnson's Dictionary edited by Jack Lynch and The Book of Spies, edited by Alan Furst, at an outlet Borders on the Viejas reservation, in southern California. Both are books I've really wanted.

Wow - lilithcat, you did marvelously.

Better than you know! Yesterday, I was visiting a friend who informed me that she was purging her books and would I like any? Silly question! Picked up a few for myself, and for my sibs. Then I loaded four cartons of books into my car and dropped them off for a charity book sale!

I was at Lemuria in Jackson, MS on Saturday and bought The Madonnas of Leningrad can't wait to start it..

bettyjo, I've gotten quite a few things from Lemuria in the last few years, mostly signed books of course, and have already ordered a signed copy of Charles Frazier's new book Thirteen Moons from them too.

Today at Strand: Staging the Jew: The Performance of an American Ethnicity, 1791, Mozart's Last Year ($1 each); B&N: The Poems of Marianne Moore ($7); Alabaster Books: Small Craft Advisories, Green Mars ($2).

Also from Alabaster: New Music 87, Serial Music and Atonality, Melodic Index to the works of Johann Sebastian Bach.

I just hit send on a scarily-expensive order from The Book People. It will work out at less than £1 a book (I bought several collections/boxed sets), but still... that's another 60+ books to catalogue when they arrive.

Just got back from Borders with copies of The Looming Tower and Schrodinger's Ball.

I added a few books to my library today too, to celebrate my new large bookcase.

Dracula by Bram Stoker
Dude, where's my country by Michael Moore
Candide by Voltaire
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
2 girls by Perihan Magden (which I appear to be the sole owner of).

Oxfam bookshop in Blackheath is fatal.

Greek Myths (Illustrated), Orientalism by Said, The Spartans an epic history by Paul Cartledge, The Enigma of Arrival by V S Naipaul, The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta by Mario Vargas Llosa, M R James' Collected Ghost Stories, Beloved by Toni Morrison and something detective-y by Susan Hill for my mother. Mostly replacing things I've 'lost', but not a bad haul for £14.

They really need to put a page function in or something for long threads like this.

Anyway. I didn't buy anything today, but so far this week I've bought:

- Supertoys Last All Summer Long by Brian Aldiss (I found it in the nonfiction section of a local library's book sale section)

- Oxford hardcovers of Roughing It and The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

- Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan

- Y: The Last Man Vol. 5 by Brian Vaughan

I really need to stop buying so many books. Money is only part of the issue. I've only read about 5/8ths of the books I own, and I have no friggin space as it is.

^ Yeah, that's me, too. I keep making detours to Borders on my way home at least once a week, and yesterday I vowed not to go near there again until I finished reading all of my unread books.

Yesterday I bought Augustine : a New Biography by James J. O'Donnell and The Little Guide to Your Well-read Life by Steve Leveen. I've reading books about reading and books, since I'm so bored with books about writing. It's been fun so far.

I buy most of my books used, so it's not quite that bad for me. In fact, the only book I've bought new in the last month or so (other than graphic novels or comic book collections or whatever you want to call them) is From These Ashes: The Complete Short SF of Fredric Brown which I mostly bought because I was astonished to actually see a copy of it at Barnes & Noble.

Like stochasticooze I buy most of my books from used book store (McKay's Used Book's & CD's). Here is what I've recently bought..

Smart Women by Judy Blume
Rebel Angels by Libba Bray
Death on The Downs by Simon Brett
Five Classic Murder Mysteries by Agatha Christie
Dead Days of Summer by Carolyn Hart
Have Your Cake and Kill Him Too by Nancy Martin
Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers
Every Boy's Got One by Meg Cabot
Dead Roots by Nancy J. Cohen
Being Committed by Anna Maxted
Dame Agatha Abroad by Agatha Christie
Make Him Look Good by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
Hallowed Bones by Carolyn Haines

Damn those Oxfam shops!

I came home with Eminent Victorians, A Treasury of the Familiar (with half a dozen old bookmarks in it, one with a illegibly scribbled original? half-poem written on it), Origins of the French Revolution, and The Crowd in the French Revolution. Pretty good haul for $10 Australian though...

I, too, buy way too many books . The other day I took my four kids to the thrift store in search of a size 3T winter coat for my two-year-old. I eventually found the the coat, but not before I had sifted through all the Harlequin Romances and Readers' Digest Condensed versions to score about 15 "real" books (the titles of which elude me, but authors include Steinbeck, Wodehouse, and Hemingway. Yippee!

Sigh... last night I dreamt I was at a thrift store with a huge book section including hardcovers all for 25 cents, and I was finding lots of great stuff.

In other news, I recently acquired a bunch of books that I had read as a kid, and that I look forward to reading again. Books in the Redwall series, some more John Bellairs, even Encyclopedia Brown. :)

My copy of The Art of Heraldry arrived in the mail today! I am beyond excited! I am a nerd!

Bought Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn..will add it to my stack and its way too high.

A kind friend gave me £50 in book tokens for letting him stay with me for a few weeks!!

So, off to Waterstone's in Wimbledon today, & returned with the following:

Love Over Scotland Alexander McCall Smith
I know there's a bit of a McCall Smith backlash brewing (probably because he writes so much) but take no notice - these Scotland Street books are really great, fun, life-enhancing things, and enjoy the peculiar quality which a daily deadline imposes. This is what made Armistead Maupin's 'Tales' books work so well, and the same dynamic is going on here. Makes for a really interesting literary form, worthy of a lot more notice IMO.

Trains and Buttered Toast John Betjeman
Together with First and Last Loves, this comprises most of Betjeman's radio talks from the 30's to the 50's. His enthusiasms are so vivid that they touch you, even if you know nothing about the subject. It's the Betjeman centenary this year, so I suppose I'm doing my bit. What I really want is a decent, proper and lavish Collected Poems to spend my money on (I'm thinking L E A T H E R). The Folio Society has produced a 'Best Loved' selection, but that's not the same thing at all, even in a nice slipcase.

The Tale Of Genji Murasaki Shikibu
11th century novel from Heian Japan. Never read it, but I love The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagan so much that as this is the other masterpiece from the period, it's about time. Fabulous Penguin deluxe edition (and printed in the USA, so excellent quality - British books are largely just yellowing crumbly dustheaps waiting to happen, really).

The Yellow Admiral
The Hundred Days
Blue At The Mizzen
The last three books in Patrick O' Brian's 20 book cycle. 'And what are you going to do now?' said the cashier, with a raised eyebrow, as he waved the books at the scanner. What indeed? Read them all again, I suppose....

At a used bookstore, last night:

Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, in a great old HBJ cover

Graham Greene's The Human Factor

W. Somerset Maugham's Cakes and Ale

Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust AND Decline and Fall, in one volume

Antoine de Saint-Exupery's Night Flight

Henry James' What Maisie Knew, with a wonderful cover drawing by Edward Gorey

and two volumes of science fiction:

Samuel R. Delaney's Nova

and Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End

...for a grand total of $4.90.

:( Darn. I still would have wanted them. - Provided they had ANYTHING in them I didn't already. With three volumes, I daresay they would have...

Goodness, 4042Albert, our local Oxfam never has anything under £2 in adult fiction (and even the children's fiction is fairly expensive as charity shops go). What was in the untouched fiction??

A local YMCA's annual book fair began this weekend. I didn't hear about it until this year, and I'm upset about that. I could certainly have spent longer there, and bought more.

Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw 50c
Tales From the Secret Annex by Anne Frank 50c
The Essential James Joyce 25c
Snow in August by Pete Hamill 75c
Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle 25c
Profiles in Courage by John F Kennedy 25c
Swann's Way by Marcel Proust $1
The Wisdom and Ideas of Plato 50c
My Brother Bill by John Faulkner 25c
Ideas and Opinions by Albert Einstein 25c
Love's been good to me by Rod McKuen 50c
In the Night Room by Peter Straub $1
The Eyes of Darkness by Dean Koontz 75c
The Sunlight Dialogues by John Gardner 50c
Q-in-Law by Peter David 50c
Another Country by James Baldwin 50c

Total: $8.25

I don't know what to read first. I'm leaning towards The Sunlight Dialogues. Gardner's Grendel is one of my favorite novels.

I was recruited to volunteer at the local thrift shop because I would organize the books as I looked through them. The good news is I get a 25% discount so that 25 cent paperback now costs 19 cents. The bad news is that it is so time consuming that I have no time to read them.
Last Friday I got The Mountains of California by John Muir, Meadow in the Sky, and A Sierra Nevada Flora just on time for next week's camping trip to Yosemite.

Well, I managed not to buy much last week, but I did pick up a remaindered copy of James Blish's Cities in Flight.

Spent $2.75 at a thrift store today...

My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
Fletch by Gregory McDonald
The Tripods Trilogy by John Christopher
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
and an Encyclopedia Brown book--hey, it was a quarter, why not?

Today I bought...

Blood Work by Michael Connelly
and
The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte

I was just trolling in Borders this morning and came out of there with James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon by Julie Phillips and a copy of Edward P. Jones' new one All Aunt Hagar's Children.

Sigh. After sticking to used and on-sale items for some time now, I just spent nearly $70 for Alan Moore's 3-volume Lost Girls. (This is at least partly because of the likelihood of its being banned.)

I can't say it's the most I've ever spent on a single work, because the complete editions of Gaiman's Sandman (10 volumes) and Sim's Cerebus (16 volumes) were, ultimately, much more; but it might be the most I've ever spent on a single work all at once. Runner-up might be the Memoirs of Casanova, or the Brecht Gesamtausgabe (which I haven't cataloged).

The biggest ticket was a present, and one of the best I've ever received: the Compact Oxford English Dictionary.

I'll see you and raise, grunin. Last month I watched $95 dollars disappear into the ether for a 1971 reprint of an 1873 dictionary, the first monolingual Thai dictionary.

It is a beautiful old book and I need it for comparison as I'm writing my thesis, but it's still the most I've ever spent on a single book.

Then I opened the cover and saw the original list price when it was printed in Bangkok: the equivalent of $6 USD. Sigh indeed...

A 1904, 4-volume York Edition of The Life and Works of Laurence Sterne, won today on Ebay. (For $9.99 - the set!) Thankfully for me, it passed without competition.

I'm pleased as Punch.

A local audiobook store is going out of business, and I got:

All Creatures Great and Small
All Things Wise and Wonderful
The Lord God Made Them All
by James Herriot and read by Christopher Timothy (who played James Herriot on the BBC tv show).

and

Princess Diaries
Princess in Pink
Princess in Love
by Meg Cabot and read by Anne Hathaway (who played the princess in the movie)

all for 80% off! Okay, it was still too much money to spend, but yay! I am already listening to All Creatures Great and Small.

Today it was The Acid House by Irvine Welsh and The Sound of the Mountain by Yasunari Kawabata. I never know what I'm going to find from day to day in my used book store. It's always a surprise. It's occasionally hard to choose.

Good morning! Has anyone else snatched up the Barnes & Noble Classics that are 50% off right now? I work at a local B&N and was scrabbling through the boxes during restocking. Picked up

The Prince and the Pauper
The Way We Live Now
Nana
Candide
Utopia
Wives and Daughters
Scaramouche
The Four Feathers
Tarzan of the Apes
Moll Flanders
Pere Goriot
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Agnes Grey
The Man in the Iron Mask

and several others in the very serviceable trade paperback editions for about $3 a piece. Some are intended to save older editions from wear and tear, but others (like Scaramouche!) I had never before encountered and just wanted to check out. It's no library sale (our local one was a week ago--that's a good-sized list too), but still a deal.

beserene: yes, I saw that sale also, though your branch has more variety than the ones around here (or maybe I got there after the interesting stuff was gone). I would have gotten several of the ones you list, but this is what I took to the checkout:

The Varieties of Religious Experience
The Death of Ivan Ilych & Other Stories
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

rikker: Oh, I don't think $70 -- or $95 -- is a ridiculous amount to pay for a book, it's just unusual for me.

grunin: Agreed. I'd happily acquire more if it were in the financial cards. :)

i won't mention the 50 or so i purchased at the friends of the library booksale last weekend, but roaming the isles of the bargain books at booksamillion this week, i came out with:

the virgin blue by tracy chevalier
all over but the shoutin' by rick bragg
In america: a novel by susan sontag
trans-sister radio by chris bohjalian
the curious incident of the dog in night-time by mark hadon

4042Albert, I got the The Dangerous Book for Boys early in the summer and have enjoyed it quite a bit.

There are a couple of bookshops and a bookstall near where I work in Westminster, London. Today at lunchtime I bought:

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
The Thames - England's River by Jonathan Schneer
Illustrated Pepys Diary

The latter two were impulse purchases. The first I had decided to buy after reading umpteen reviews on the Amazon UK website.

John

Today I bought my first book in quite a while. It was In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami. Can't wait to start to read it - although I should finish what I've already started with before doing that! :)

recent hauls, all slightly used:

the joy luck club - amy tan. hardbound

a redbird christmas - fannie flag. paperback

mansfield park - jane austen

anne of windy poplars - l.m. montgomery

everything for a little less the USD2.00, converted from Philippine peso =)

Just joined, so not lots to report. I'm trying to cut back because my bookshelves are all full, and there's not room in the house to add more.

This week I received copies of The ABC's and All Their Tricks, by M. Bishop. It's a handy little book if you're a teacher, want to teach spelling, and your district has chucked their curriculum.

I also picked up a copy of Bowmen of England, by Donald Featherstone. I suspect it will be more entertaining than historically accurate, but that's fine with me.

Was at a "remaindered book outlet store" today...all new, but all for $33 and some change.

The Fourth Durango by Ross Thomas
The Wall of Sky, The Wall of Eye by Jonathan Lethem
Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
Dame Agatha Abroad which is an anthology including Murder on the Orient Express. Psyche.
The Kills by Linda Fairstein - her touchstones don't work - someone has the book title all screwed up and it's coming up as a PJ O'Roarke book. Bah.
Twelfth Card by Jeffery Deaver
We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver which I read from the library when it first came out - it is stunning.

grunin: if you are still after more titles in that line, you might check back at your local B&N. I don't know about them, but we kept getting more in after the sale started, not to mention random titles found in backstock after the more popular/mainstream classics had moved out of the way. And sometimes you find the line in the stacks as well. Not that I want to contribute to anyone's already burdened bank balances, but just in case... :)

PS--went a day without buying a book. Quite shocked at myself. Must do better tomorrow.

I loved We Need to Talk About Kevin..thought I would also like Vernon Little God but just could not read it.

I finally caved in my effort not to buy any more books until I'd gotten the pile down a little. So yesterday I spent a lovely couple of hours in the bookshop.
Specimen Days by Michael Cunningham
Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde
Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde
Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally
A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick
Book Lovers London by Lesley Reader

At my own local B&N, at least I stuck to sale books. I got:

A Pound of Paper by John Baxter
The Final Solution: a story of detection by Michael Chabon
The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy (partly for Hadji Murad, included)
The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf

All for $14. I nearly added Jonathan Lethem's The Fortress of Solitude, and then didn't. Anyone have a swaying comment on it?

I think Lethem's among a handful of the really great writers of our time, and while others might make a case for Gun, with Occasional Music or Motherless Brooklyn, I think The Fortress of Solitude is truly his magnus opus so far. It's certainly not a book for everyone, particularly if you're not interested in the evolution of pop music from the 60s through the 90s, but I've read it twice and just loved it both times.

Ah, excellent, Louis: thank you. I've wanted to read Gun, with Occasional Music, but may start with The Fortress of Solitude, instead. Just depends on what they have left when I get back. :)

Just picked up CSS Pocket Reference and The Zen of CSS design at B&N to make my web development go a little quicker. I usually just use web resources, but sometimes it's just better to have a bok in your hand!

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
Obasan by Joy Kogawa (just finished reading)
My Very First Mother Goose by Rosemary Wells
Little Boy Blue: and Other Rhymes by Rosemary Wells
Where's Waldo? The Simply Sensational Activity Book by Martin Handford
Dinos To Go by Sandra Boynton
Texas Home Cooking by Cheryl Alters Jamison

over the weekend i purchased:
the dew breaker by edwidge danticat
the mammoth cheese by sheri holman
sushi for beginners by marian keyes
child of my heart by alice mcdermott
dress your family in corduroy and denim by david sedaris
very much to my delight they were all 5.00 or less and all on my to read list!!!

My Monday involved the Half-Price Books Labor Day Sale:

Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem
The Portable Melville
The Three Roads by Ross MacDonald
The Door to Doom by John Dickson Carr

An ill-assorted collection, but what can you do?

I wish all our touchstones had come out, not just loaded...

A dozen or so second-hand books, totalling £18, including one I've wanted since I was 3! (How the Mole got his Pockets, which probably means nothing to anyone but me. Ho hum.)

Then I got home to discover that two Amazon orders have shipped, and a third large order will ship tomorrow. Just in time for a weekend away where I'll get at least eight hours uninterrupted reading time, hoorah!

Quite a good day trawling the charity shops, picked up Be Cool for the blokey who's been reading crime fiction recently, he's one of those people who reads the same author repeatedly, so getting him to read anything new is a challenge.
Goblin Market Rossetti is one of the few poets I like, but I bought this because I fell in love with the illustrations.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, I think I'm possibly the only person to have not read this book yet, it's especially odd as I work with people with learning disabilities.
Last but certainly not least I got myself yet another copy of Weaveworld this is my favourite book ever. I read it a couple of times a year, and I love it so much that I keep loaning it to friends to read. The problem is they end up loving it too so I have to go out and buy another copy for myself. This "new" copy is actually held together with an elastic band, but it's still in better condition than the last one.
4 books for £3, a good days shopping.

Argh! Too much time off spent in the bookstore can only end in an empty bank account for me and a solemn oath to work more overtime. What did I NOT buy, might be the better question.

I puchased The Tomb(A Repairman Jack Novel) by F. Paul Wilson, Books 1,2 & 3 in The Mediator Series by Meg Cabot, three books about trains for my nephew, Magyk by Angie Sage, Divine by Mistake by P.C. Cast, Malice in Maggody by Joan Hess, Warriors: Rising Storm by Erin Hunter, Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny, and The Individuated Hobbit: Jung, Tolkien and the Archetypes of Middle-Earth by Timothy R. O'Neill.

Now, in my own defense, I must say that a few of these selections came from using some of my trade credit at the used bookstore. Unfortunately, not enough of it.

Meh. Who needs a cell phone service anyway? Though I may have to pay the electric at some point, because it's hard to read in the dark.

LOL. Exactly. So it is. Otherwise....

Oh, yeah; my copy of The Probability Broach, by L. Neil Smith arrived today.

Remembered that I had a 15% off coupon and a £10 off coupon, both of which expire in the near-ish future, so went to Borders today and picked up a dozen books - some reference for me, for work, and some easy readers for my son. Forgot to look for the Wodehouse anthology I want, so I might just have to go back next week with the 15% off coupon that arrived in my email about an hour ago...

I ordered volumes eleven to fourteen of Elfquest: The Grand Quest by Wendy and Richard Pini.

I suppose we've all heard the quote from Erasmus: "When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes."

Exactly. I often think of it. Lately I've started to wonder if, when confronted by books, I think about the possible necessity or desirability of ANYTHING else (except maybe tea). Books seem like the lifeline and necessity, fond as I am even of food and clothing.

Jim Thompson's After Dark, My Sweet arrived today, for the Hardboiled/Noir group read.

$2 at the Salvation Army got me:

All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot
Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper

Let's see, since the last time I posted (about a week ago) I've bought

A Game of Thrones ($4, new)
The Good Earth (20 cents, used)
A Brief History of Time ($1, used)... which I'm frankly somewhat embarrassed I didn't already own
Nextwave Vol. 1: This Is What They Want! ($20, new)
Y: The Last Man Vol. 6: Girl on Girl ($13, new)

stochasticooze - I have to recommend what I wish someone had told me... Make sure you have access to the other Song of Ice and Fire books before you start A Game of Thrones. I finished the first one and had to wait almost three weeks to get my hands on the next one. Tough waiting!

I sympathize with Rikker and Erasmus. My fridge is empty and my clothes... well, they're the latest in hobo-trendy.

Hobo-trendy is the trendiest!

Fridge? What fridge? Oh, you mean that thing I stick all my wishlists and coupons and new release notices to... there's supposed to be something in that?

Last night I picked up World Mythology, my excuse for the purchase being that I wanted to use it for the mythology class I'm teaching. I didn't really use it, but I'm sticking to that excuse because it's a beautiful book and, darn it, I wanted it.

This week I went to Barcelona in a work trip, so it was an excuse to buy something!! ;op
It was Beach Road by James Patterson.

Here's what I bought yesterday at Borders:

Under the Black Flag by David Cordingly
One Bullet Away by Nathaniel C. Fick
Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder

I had a coupon that I put to good use.

I discovered a book shop that sells used books yesterday. It's cheap and it's wonderful. I found many books there and bought two already: Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh, which I'm very excited about - I was in Thich Nhat Hanh's monastery in France this summer and they only had the book in the French translation.

And I also bought the German translation of 'Tis by Frank McCourt (which doesn't work with the touchstone feature). I considered reading it in English, but I could not find a copy anywhere, and this one was cheap. I'm weird about reading books from a series in different languages or different editions anyway.

Four more books from Amazon just arrived!

Pretties by Scott Westerfeld
Freedom's Sisters by Naomi Kritzer
Elantris by Brandon Sanderson
The Fool's Run by John Sandford

I took advantage of the 4-for-3 deal they had going on. Woohoo!

Courtesy of Target:
The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo
Night by Elie Wiesel
Diverse reading....

I paid the same in US$ as I would have paid in GB£ back in London...

I seem to be on a book-buying roll...

Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan
The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan
Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut

I got a couple of interesting things late last week, among them a fine US 1st ed of J.G. Farrell's 1970 novel Troubles, which I read last year and absolutely loved, and Friday I came back from Borders with a copy of John Fante's 1939 novel Ask the Dust and a copy of Brief Encounters with Che Guevara by Ben Fountain. I finished the Fante last night, a spectacular book, and am already halfway through Fountain's eight stories in Che Guevara and have loved every one so far, amazing stuff.

And in today's mail from Amazon, Max Brooks' World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, and from Amazon UK, The Religion by Tim Willocks.

This is my first post on one of these LT message boards, so please forgive if I didn't do it correctly. :-)

Anyway, I bought some fun books this weekend at a wonderful used bookstore in Santa Fe that I just discovered:

Will Shuster: A Santa Fe Legend by Joseph Dispenza
Old Santa Fe Today by The Historic Santa Fe Foundation
Siglos de Santa Fe: Program, 350th Anniversary La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Assisi by Leo T. Murphy

I was born and raised in Santa Fe and am collecting good books about its history. These all have some great vintage photos of the city I'd never seen before.

A wonderful city, Rachael, and a post made perfectly. :) I've visited briefly, twice, and wished very much to go to school there. You're fortunate to have a city with so long and interesting a history, to collect on. :) Thanks for sharing the titles with us!

Thanks, Eurydice! :-)

::random side note: When I was a kid, I had a Siamese cat named Eurydice--I keep thinking of her everytime I see your name here. Heehee. Of course, we also had a cat named Orpheus::

Anyway--glad you've gotten to visit Santa Fe. Where were you interested in going to school? St. John's? I do feel fortunate to be from there--it's a really special, crazy, place. :-)

Yesterday I made a ginormous pot of spahgetti and used the rest of the grocery money at the bookstore.

Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger
Definitely Dead by Charlain Harris
Wrapt in Crystal by Sharon Shinn
Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue
How to Train Your Dragon by Hiccup Horrnedous Haddock III translated from the Old Norse by Cressida Cowell

I bought a cheesecake over the weekend. It counts because I bought it at a bookstore. The Barnes & Noble cafe freezer broke while I was working the other day--it had 20 cheesecakes inside. The rule is that once a cheesecake thaws, you have four days to use it. 20 in four days? Not likely. So management decided to sell them to staff at *severely reduced* prices. Mmmmmm... pumpkin cheesecake. Other than a book, that's the best thing you can buy at a bookstore.

Oh my, apparently it was a good day for book buying (or a bad day if you're trying to balance my checkbook):

Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde
The Care and Feeding of Books Old and New
The Book of Fate by Brad Meltzer
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne--(I'm very anxious to read this one!)
Reading Women--a lovely book
And to read with my first grader: Do Not Open This Book by Michaela Muntean.
And FINALLY I'm still waiting for an Amazon delivery of The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield.

Now if I can only find time to read half of those!

Dying for It because a friend has a short story published within (after I promised myself I wouldn't even *visit* amazon.com again for at least a month!)

Yesterday I gave in to the siren song that is the bargain book table at Hastings. They were all 30% off their already low low prices! How can you resist? Resistance is futile.

Antiques Roadshow Collectibles: The Complete Guide to Collecting 20th Century Glassware, Costume Jewelry, Memorabila, Toys and More From the Most-Watched Show on PBS by Carol Prisant
It's All American Food: The Best Recipes for More Than 400 New American Classics by David Rosengarten
How to Grill: The Complete Illustrated Book of Barbecue Techniques by Steven Raichlen

Resistance is indeed futile.

Yesterday I picked up Sixpence House by Paul Collins and How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen.

I've finally admitted my tendency to drop books that I'm currently reading at a whim to read my latest purchase, because 1)It's reading material that I'm interested in, and 2)I know I'll finish it faster. Still, it's maddening. So many books, so little time.

To grunin - I've just tuned in to this group, and read your note connecting Henry Mayhew, Victorian journalist, with Richard Mayhew, Gaiman's hero of Neverwhere. I do know both works, and never made the connection! Thanks for the insight!

Which reminds me: I've had the first volume of the Dover edition of Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor for years, and somehow I've never got around to hunting for and acquiring the other volumes. A quest! (It is a magnificent work, well worth reading, though perhaps best read in small doses.)

Two books at a charity sale, $1 each...

The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh and Thirst for Love by Yukio Mishima

Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum
Bookmark Now, edited by Kevin Smokler

Added:
Believers: A Journey into Evangelical America by Jeffery Sheler
Blog of War, edited by Matthew Currier Burden

3for2 at Waterstone's strikes again! Days From A Different World (started on the bus home, and gripping - memoir of a 1940s childhood in London); Last Post (WWI veterans reminisce); A Piano In The Pyrenees (humour) leapt into my hand when all I was going to pick up was a 99p novel from their promotional range (The Innocent, this week).
Yesterday it was two volumes of Australian history (The Fatal Shore and Dancing With Strangers) as a result of watching The Incredible Journey of Mary Bryant, and a Kim Stanley Robinson novel just because. I never need an excuse for a new KSR.

Someone posted a question a couple of days ago on the "Historical Fiction" list asking what books set in WWII that people recommended and I made a list in Excel of all of those (if anyone wants me to email them a copy, just let me know your email address) Then I made a trip to my local Used Book store and found quite a few. Amongst the two grocery bags of books that I walked out with were the following: (I'm sure I must be the last person on earth to read the Davinci Code, but I finally caved and bought it LOL)
Angels & demons - Dan Brown
Gestapo - Sven Hassel
The constant gardener : a novel - John Le Carré
The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
Escape & Evasion: Pow Breakouts In World War II - Ian Dear
Exodus - Leon Uris
Finding Laura Buggs - Stanley Gordon West
Gone to Soldiers - Marge Piercy
Goodbye, Mickey Mouse - Len Deighton
Iron star - Brian Kelleher
Jackdaws - Ken Follett2001used, sept 20 06, unread
Marjorie Morningstar - Herman Wouk1973used, sept 20 06, unread
MEMOIRS (1925-1950) - George F. Kennan
Stones from the River - Ursula Hegi
True history of the Kelly gang - Peter Carey
War and Remembrance: a Novel - Herman Wouk

I've been having a grand time since last week adding books to my WWI collection. Thanks mostly to eBay and my local public library book shop, I've acquired:
2 noted WWI novels written by WWI veterans: Through the Wheat, by Thomas Boyd, reissued in paperback in 2000 by Univ. of Nebraska Press (originally published in 1923); and Plumes, by Lawrence Stallings, in a 1925 printing. According to Amazon, this one is due to be reissued by Univ of South Carolina Press on November 11, 2006 - perfect publication date!
Over the Top: Great Battles of the First World War, by Martin Marix Evans.
Speak French: A Book for the Soldiers, which is a French lesson/phrase book published in 1917 for US soldiers to take to France. Really cool.
The Americans in the Great War, Vol. II: The Battle of Saint Mihiel, published by Michelin in 1920. Michelin published a series of photo-illustrated guidebooks just after WWI for the many tourists who wanted to visit the battlefields and towns involved in the war.
Finally, I found what appears to be a first American edition of Alan Clark's The Donkeys, a classic work about the leaders of the BEF in France in 1915. This replaces an old paperback edition, which is good, the only drawback being that the hardcover edition takes up twice as much space on my over-burdened bookshelves.
And today I just purchased 2 Ospreys on the Doughboys and the British Army on the Western Front.
Feels like Christmas!

Three targets-of-opportunity from the weekly sale at the downtown library:
On certainty
Social movements of the Sixties and Seventies
Veniss underground

And, waiting for me at home, Liberty and Freedom, a something of a bargain (five bucks, delivered) from eBay. (I'm becoming a fan of David Hackett Fischer, but this was a fifty dollar book new - too steep for me.) This turned out to be a book club edition, not the actual OUP edition - a minor disappointment, but it did save me about eight bucks vs. the remaindered trade version. (The eight-dollar-difference can buy a lot of books.)

I didn't exactly buy them, but today I recieved Under the Duvet by Marian Keyes and Blackbird House by Alice Hoffman as gifts.

The Mercy Room by Gilles Rozier, Walter, the Story of a Rat by Barbara Wersba

One of the dangers of my neighborhood is the existence of a Border's store just two blocks from my house, and right on the route I take when I walk about on my Saturday morning errands. Hence, today, from their bargain books section:

Women Photographers at National Geographic, by Cathy Newman
And the Walls Came Tumbling Down, by Michael S. Lief and H. Mitchell Caldwell.

Speaking of dangers--I just got a Barnes & Noble Mastercard this week. In celebration of my last shift (and, tragically, the end of my employee discount, since I just don't have time for 3 jobs right now), I spent almost $700 in two days at good old B&N. Among the piles:

Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino
The Annotated Brothers Grimm
Zen Shorts
Saga of the Volsungs
Fablehaven
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, vols. 1 and 2
The Masks of God (Primitive Mythology)
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Endymion Spring
Pay the Piper
The Norton Anthology of Children's Literature, slipcased edition
Break, Blow, Burn
Heavy Words, Lightly Thrown
Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony

I'll stop there, lest the full list take up the entire screen. I did get several Christmas presents taken care of, as well as some other gifts for friends. But I spent a good chunk on myself, for no real reason at all. It was delicious.

Oh, and you are not alone, warbrideslass; I haven't read the DaVinci Code either.

Yesterday was my birthday, and my husband fed my book addiction with these wonderful gifts!

Feast: Food to Celebrate Life by Nigella Lawson
Cesar's Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding and Correcting Common Dog Problems by Cesar Millan
Santa Fe: A Walk Through Time by Kingsley Hammett
and
Napolean Dynamite: Flippin' Sweet!

I'm a lucky birthday girl!

I just got The thirteenth tale by Diane Setterfield.
Since Monday is my birthday - happy belated birthday to you, Rachael! - I expect to get more books!!!!

Paola :-))

Thank you, Paola!

And a Buon Compleanno to you in advance! Here's wishing you lots of good birthday book loot.

I got Cormac McCarthy's The Road in today's mail, and I went ahead and ordered a first edition of William T. Vollman's 1989 collection The Rainbow Stories, plus a copy of the new translation of War and Peace too.

Oh, I had a fun day at the Joseph-Beth Booksellers store today. I got Evidence of Things Unseen, One Hundred Years of Solitude, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Plus, I got The Thirteenth Tale, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, The Jane Austen Book Club and The Memory Keeper's Daughter in the past week.

I'm on a roll! lol

Hello all!!! Today there was an "Open Air Book Fair" to benefit Housing Works in NYC, a charity that helps homeless people with AIDS. There were lots of people, and it looks like it went well. Anyhoo...I bought several books...here it goes:
1) The Divided Self--- R.D. Laing
2) Stones for Ibarra---Harriet Doerr
3) The Reader---Bernhard Schlink
4) The Kabbalist of Lisbon---Richard Zimler
5) A Year With Thomas Merton: Daily Meditations from His Journals--- Ed. Jonathan Montaldo
6) Serpico---Peter Maas
7) Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship---Goeth---Edition from 1890....bought it for $1....its in really good condition..some wear, but the spine is intact, most of the pages are good as well.

I picked up The Mephisto Club by Gerritsen at Sam's club. I've never read one of hers before so it's kind of a gamble going with a new hardcover first try, but I've heard good things about her and have high hopes.

Most of my recent books have come from BookMooch, but on Thursday I bought used copies of The Goodbye Look, by Ross MacDonald; The Listening Walls, by his wife, Margaret Millar; Slight Mourning by Catherine Aird; and Pictures of Perfection by Reginald Hill at a great mystery bookshop. (Thanks to certain LT members for three of the recommendations, author-wise.) The only wonder is that I didn't come out with more. :) I certainly wanted to. Since then, I've ordered (again used) Edmund Crispin's Love Lies Bleeding, and - as of this morning - Virginia Woolf's The Years. A 1937 hardcover was one of the cheapest copies I've seen, forty-year-old paperbacks included. :) Hope it'll hold together, at the least; but a contemporary copy will have its own pleasure, however ratty it may be. (Though this one certainly didn't say it would be!)

Now I'm going to head into the truly dangerous waters of The Dead Beat, and enjoy Murder By the Book's current recommendations...

Incidentally - happy belated birthday to Rachael, and coming birthday to Paola! My congratulations to a number of others on their finds....

Thank you, Eurydice! :-)

WOW! Thanks Eurydice and thank you Rachael!! I was pleased in reading the 'Buon Compleanno' wishes!! I already have the first birthday gift, a gift card for Barnes & Noble, which I will use today. We shall see what I am going to get....
:-)))))

aluvalibri--I just finished reading The Thirteenth Tale. It was FANTASTIC! Highly recommended, especially for anyone (like all of us) who enjoys books, and books about books. I can't even express how much I enjoyed that novel.

On a totally different note: Went to an antiquarian book show on Sunday. Bought an 1888 edition of Louisa May Alcott's Life, Letters; and Journals and a copy of Gaudenzia Pride of the Palio by Marguerite Henry, which was a title of hers that I had never before encountered. A friend bought me an advance Christmas gift, the first volume of Aunt Jo's Scrap Bag. I didn't get to take that one home--he's going to wrap it and put it under the tree in a couple of months--but I still consider it mine. :)

How neat, beserene!

Paola and Rachael, you're both most welcome, and I hope the days were happy.

I was near a beloved shabby used bookstore today, and succumbed to copies of:

The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing and The Baron and the Unfinished Portrait, (for which I can find no correct touchstone) by John Creasey, which make two more attempts to widen my reading in the mystery and suspense genre(s).

Also, The Portable Henry James, J.M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World, Dylan Thomas' Adventures in the Skin Trade, and other stories, Faulkner's Sanctuary with Requiem for a Nun, and Literature of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century, a slim volume of literary history/criticism which may be a touch old but looked appealing.

Hi to all!
beserene, I have just finished (this morning on the train) The meaning of night by Michael Cox, another GREAT book, well worth reading. I will soon start The thirteenth tale. After reading what you say about ir, I am now even more eager to read it.
My birthday was an excellent one, I must admit (perhaps because I turned 50 and everyone thinks that it is a special birthday???). Among other gifts, I got three gift certificates, two for B&N and one for Shakespeare & Co., which I will spend at lunchtime, since the shop is near my office. Oh bliss!!!!!

:-))

Went to a 'Friends' sale last Sunday and bought 2 bags full (posted a list at Broke! Message Board). Everything from history to romance. Now to make some time for reading... One I'm eager to dip into is the Time-Life book Wizards and Witches because of the wonderful illustrations.

Just came back from lunch break and, with one of my birthday's gift cards, I bought Julie and Julia: my year of cooking dangerously by Julie Powell and When you lunch with the emperor by Ludwig Bemelmans. I am VERY happy!

Paola :-))

I ordered Glass Houses by Rachel Caine which just came out. I'm looking forward to reading it for a myspace group I'm part of. It will be my first book club experience :-)

Arrived from BOMC -
Water for Elephants
The House Next Door
and
The Thirteenth Tale

The first and the third are new authors for me and I cannot wait to dive in. I've read THND before and thought it would make a fine addition to my horror collection.

Let's see. It was educator's week at B&N so I got a few things. Can't sneeze at 25% off everything, whether I'm using it for homeschooling or not! hehe

I bought The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, Saving Fish From Drowning by Amy Tan, Faithless by Karin Slaughter, All the Math You'll Ever Need, The History of Love by Nicole Krauss, and I'm going back tomorrow for...

A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby and some Agatha Christie hardback editions that look cool.

I just got a huge shipment from Amazon of books for my kids (mostly Newberry medal and honor) to expand our home library, too. :o)

I picked up a hardback edition of 'The Bourne Ultimatum' by Robert Ludlum today at the Mennonite Auction in Ritzville Washington (wasn't an auction item, just in the "yard sale" stuff) for fifty cents.

Last instalment of my birthday gift cards. This one was from B&N. I got Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, Albion by Peter Ackroyd, and The illustrated Jane Eyre with illustrations by Dame Darcy. Now, with all the books I got in the last month, I have a lot of reading to do. Oh bliss!!!!!!

My local library has the following quote on its Friends of the Library Book Sale page:

Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?
--Henry Ward Beecher

How true. Yesterday I picked up I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb, Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards, and The Mermaids Singing by Lisa Carey.

Oh, and new copies of Mists of Avalon and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, to replace copies that got lent to friends and ruined.

I try to limit myself to one pass through the Library Book Sale per month, and I've been reading like a fiend... and yet, my to-be-read pile is not getting any smaller... strange, that. :)

Knit Along with Debbie Macomber: Cedar Cove Collection Leisure Arts# 4658

It's been a hot three days of book buying, as the local Co-op had their annual book sale.

The first two days, I bought the following:

James Sherwood's Discriminating Guide, London, Fine Dining and Shopping
The Sharpshooter Blues, by Lewis Nordan
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, by Giorgio Bassani
The Fox Woman, by Kij Johnson
Fresh Men 2: New Voices in Gay Fiction
Pass the Polenta, and other writings from the kitchen, by Teresa Lust
Appleby Talking, by Michael Innes
The Leopard's Tooth, by William Kotzwinkle
Suitable for Hanging, by Margaret Maron
Passover, by David Mamet
The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars, by Anthony Boucher
Revenge: Short Stories by Women Writers
A Day in Venice: Practical Guide with Plan of Monuments, by Edoardo Bonechi
Blue Guide: Venice
The Face of Louisiana, photographs by Elemore Morgan, text by Charles East

Today being the last day, it was also $4 bag/$5 box day. The haul:

Eminent Victorians, by Lytton Strachey (a Folio Society edition)
The Wild Man, and The Beauty Queen, both by Patricia Nell Warren
Simple Prayers, by Michael Golding
The Gold of Ancient America (an exhibition catalogue)
A Season for Justice, by Morris Dees
Blood of my Blood, by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Ptown: Art, Sex and Money on the Outer Cape, by Peter Manso
The Private Death of Public Discourse, by Barry Sanders
The Right and the Power, by Leon Jaworski
Lovecraft's Follies, a play by James Schevill
The Long Loneliness, by Dorothy Day
La Divina, by Anne Edwards (a roman-à-clef about Maria Callas)
American Dreams: Lost & Found, by Studs Terkel
Requiem: The Decline and Demise of Mayor Daley and his Era, by Len O'Connor
The White Robin, by Miss Read
Daughter of France: The Life of La Grande Mademoiselle, by Vita Sackville-West
Bengal Nights, by Mircea Eliade
Unfortunately, She was also Wired for Sound, by Gary Trudeau
The Compass: The Improvisational Theatre that Revolutionized American Comedy, by Janet Coleman
Il tormento e l'estasi, by Irving Stone (and, in case I get stuck, The Agony and the Ecstasy!)

Vintage Knits by Sarah Dallas.

Finally a place where I can confess my habit! Bookshops are dangerous places. I went shopping this weekend for my boyfriend's birthday. While I did pick him up some of his wishlist Heat by Bill Bufford, the new Michael Palin diaries and London Noir crime stories, somehow that was the excuse for the following to fall into my shopping basket: Our Spoons came from Woolworths by Barbara Comyns, the new Salman Rushdie Shalimar the clown, Joan Didon The year of magical thinking, Silk by Alessandro Barrico, The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk, The Contortionist's handbook by Craig Clevenger and Making it up by Penelope Lively. I'm just hoping he doesn't find this post!

I've just bought one book today. I feel as though I should be ashamed of myself!

I bought Glass Houses by Rachel Caine because it is the book the myspace group, bites and kisses, has elected to read this month.

And from the 'man, I have to get better organized department,', I confess I had to buy three copies of one of my own books today! I'm out of Grandparents' Day and have some library gigs coming up... publisher is in Toronto, I'm on the west coast and worried that books shipped from back east won't arrive in time. Of course, couldn't escape the bookstore without also picking up a copy of Reading with Babies, Toddlers, and Twos and Kids' Poems: Teaching First Graders to Love Writing Poetry. Most recent acquisition that was not somehow work-related was Micronations: The Lonely Planet Guide to Home-Made Nations. I want my own country!

Well, it wasn't today, but about a week ago I made out like a bandit at the city library's annual used book sale. I scored 25 books for less that $18! Paperbacks were $.50 and hardbacks were $1. Anyway, I won't list them all, but I did get 3 Patricia Cornwell books, about 6 Jackie Collins books, a couple of John Sandford books, and some other crime/mystery/thrillers. I'm a member of 2 books clubs, and I'm a regular at our local Books-a-Million and Hastings stores, so I'm always buying books. In fact, I just remembered that I did pre-order the newest Nicholas Sparks book, Dear John, yesterday, so that'll be arriving in about a week.

I've just had a great couple of hours in the Oxfam Books and Music shop, where I picked up 7 books for £20, some of them hardback, and rather pricey in the UK. I could have bought a lot more!

The Extra Large Medium by Helen Slavin
Be Cool by Elmore Leonard
Her Privates We by Frederic Manning
True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne
King Dork by Frank Portman
The Thin Place by Kathryn Davis

The last two have been talked up on one of the Blogs I read regularly (www.bookslut.com), so there was an audible gasp when I found them in pristine hardcover.

Today I bought fruit from the shops (banana, oranges, apples and a grapefruit).

I didn`t buy any books, but on my return I resumed reading English Humour by J B Priestley. It is very dated - was probably already dated when it first appeared. The subject matter takes in humourous actors , illustrators, writers etc. The actors I have no interest in whatsoever, but somehow he keeps my attention. I`d hesitate to recommend it to anyone but am enjoying it I must admit.

I had a couple of interesting things arrive this past week from Amazon UK, a copy of William Boyd's new novel Restless, along with a copy of Vikram Chandra's sprawling 900-page gangster epic Sacred Games, which I'm already about 200 pages into right now and can hardly put down.

I also got, from Amazon US, a copy of The Annotated Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, just a totally gorgeous book, beautifully illustrated with rare prints, posters and photos, and another stellar example of the very fine Norton annotated series.

I actually did not buy anything today, but got Mayhew's London and The Virago Book of fairy tales and The second Virago Book of fairy tales in the mail.

Thanks for the recommendation, aluvalibri--I'll have to check out the Cox book. No books for me today, but I have been enjoying the free textbooks perk that comes with my teaching job. Got a Classical Mythology text in my department mailbox last week. Also got Action Philosophers in the mail from Amazon on Saturday, along with a $25 Barnes and Noble gift card which I am trying to save for a rainy day. It's supposed to rain tomorrow!

Fell off the wagon again. I had a meeting in Bloomsbury yesterday evening, and I couldn't avoid (ok, resist) walking via the Persephone shop on the way. The excuse was the need to get a present for a friend whom I always struggle to buy for (they're getting The Gardener's Nightcap) but with the promise of a discount if you buy three, I also succumbed to Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day and The making of a marchioness. This is no way to be saving money! And I haven't yet read any of the books I bought last week......though pleased to see Pamuk win the Nobel. Obviously adding The Black Book to my unread pile made all the difference!

My very first Folio Society book arrived yesterday - it's a gently used copy of Rebecca. I was impressed by the dealer's accuracy of describing its condition and with the volume itself. I had to force myself from looking at all the illustrations so I can experience them for the first time as I read the book, which I plan to do after I come back from vacation. While it's not exactly horror, it's a creepy gem that is in perfect keeping with Halloween.

I KNEW you would do it, finebalance!!!! And, of course, I am envious....
The Gardener's Nightcap and The making of a marchioness are exactly two of the books I had my heart set on, when I looked through the Persephone catalogue.....well, perhaps I too will succumb....;-)

Today's purchases were: As Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCann, Adam's Curse by Bryan Sykes and A Girl Could Stand Up by Leslie Marshall.

A couple of semi-cool things came from Amazon today: a copy of Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West by Hampton Sides, along with a copy of The Boy Detective Fails by Joe Meno, a trade paperback with French flaps, with a cutout on the rear fold that shows how you can make you own Boy Detective Decoder Ring.

I just got The White Castle by Orhan Pamuk, and The Sugar House by Antonia White.

The Children's Hospital held their paperback sale today. For the wonderful price of $4.75, I got:

Sandry's Book by Tamora Pierce
The Enchanted Castle by E. Nesbit
The Last of the Dragons and some others by E. Nesbit
The Phoenix and the Carpet by E. Nesbit
The Beginning Place by Ursula K. Le Guin
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
Shogun by James Claval
and a book of Robin Hood stories

I came home to find that volume two of Thieves & Kings had arrived in the mail, too. Lovely book day!

Today my Local Public Library had it's bi-annual book sale, woo hooo! I garnered 13 books for a whopping $6.50. Well, that's not entirely true, the book sale gave up 10 books for $3.50 but I just had to go into their book store for three more at $1.00 a piece. All are hardback.

Don't Panic: Douglas Adams & the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Neil Gaiman
Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams
In Heaven as on Earth by M. Scott Peck, M.D.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield
'Tis by Frank McCourt
The Plains of Passage by Jean M. Auel
The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike
Comedies II by William Shakespeare
The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan
All Creatures Great and Small by Daniel P. Mannix
Black Holes and baby Universes by Stephen Hawking
Origins Reconsidered by Richard Leakey

Book sales are wonderful things.

Tried editing to get all the touchstones to work.

I went into the used bookstore today with one book to trade and came out with four. Of course, I spent way more than what I got in trade...::feels kinda guilty:: :-)

The Fairy's Return by Gail Carson Levine
When Santa Fell to Earth by Cornelia Funke
Past the Size of Dreaming by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
A Red Heart of Memories by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

As I had to be in Springfield (IL.) for a conference, I visited the Lincoln Museum (great place, by the way), and purchased "Mrs. Lady President" and the Women of Washington Society, by Peggy Dunn.

I just ordered TWO books from Amazon.com. One is called The Darkness Within, written by Jenine Wilson, aka demonlover, a member of LibraryThing! Neat, huh? The second is a book on tarot card reading by Joan Bunning.

Another reason I'm so excited about ordering TWO books is because I don't often buy books anymore ~ I usually borrow them from the library. My house is already overrun with books, and I'm planning a move to an even smaller place in the near future, so I'm trying not to add to the chaos, at least until I release some of the ones I have on my shelves (and in boxes and on tables and inside trunks and under the bed and ... well, you see what I mean). :) But reference books and books written by friends (if I may be so bold as to claim a friendship with demonlover) is different!

Want to get the entire series by Philippa Gregory ( over a few months ). Also, Anne Boleyn ( her true story ). Looking forward to a good read.
HAPPY READING !

In today's mail from Square Books in Oxford, Miss., a signed copy of Charles Frazier's new novel Thirteen Moons.

I started studying ikebana recently, and this afternoon my husband brought me a book he discovered while browsing a second-hand bookshop - namely Ikebana: Spirit and Technique by Shusui Komoda. It's a really superb work that I hadn't seen before. (What a wonderful husband I have!!!)

Went into a thrift shop looking for something else and came out with a book.

The Silver Gryphon by Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon.

The Golden Mean by Nick Bantock. I've wanted it for ages!

I bought a copy of the Times yesterday because it came with a free copy of Paddington Abroad. Only 65p.

That's NOT fair! The New York Times never gives you anything for free.....:-(((

Yarn Harlot and Knitting Rules by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. Preordered One Skein Wonders from Amazon

Freedom's Apprentice by Naomi Kritzer and King Dork by Frank Portman from Borders today. I tried really hard to resist, but...

I just went to two library sales and got what follows:
The city of falling angels by John Berendt
The mansion by William Faulkner
Mysteries of Winterthurn by Joyce Carol Oates
City of darkness, city of light by Marge Piercy
The book thief by Markus Zusak
Labyrinth by Kate Mosse
English passengers by Matthew Kneale
The birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant
Now I am going to add them to my catalogue....
:-))

I guess its been a while since I checked out this thread. Storeetllr - of course you can consider me a friend :-) Even if you decide you don't like The Shadow Within after reading it LOL (of course, I really hope you DO like it!)

Today we went to Borders and I couldn't resist buying Then He Ate My Boy Entrancers by Louise Rennison. I'm just very anxious to see how Georgia does in the U.S.

While on vacation I got sucked into two bookstores (I am so jealous of you Bellingham, WA residents that you have Village Books & Eclipse Books practically next door to each other) and came out with:

Nothing That Meets The Eye by Patricia Highsmith
Talk to the Hand by Lynne Truss
The Hanged Man's Song by John Sandford
The Minotaur which is actually Rendell's Vine personna, not the Rendell personna as listed in the touchstone.

I had to tear myself away since I had to get all of these beauties back home - 3000 miles!

Based upon a recommendation in the Travel thread, I ordered a copy of Two Degrees West from Amazon.

Today I bought a pint of beer - Theakston`s Best Bitter, though i was tempted by their Mild.

Bookwise, i am re-reading The World and Africa by W E B Du Bois.

Dead Man's Folly by Agatha Christie.

I bought a copy of The Prince by Macchiavelli in a secondhand bookshop in Greenwich.

I picked up Conquistador, A Meeting at Corvallis, and The Death and Life of Superman at Barnes and Noble.

The main library started their book sale today, so I stopped by and picked up Firewing by Kenneth Oppel and Confessions of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella.

Do online orders count, or can I only declare the book when it arrives at my door? Because, you know, I bought it today :-)

I ordered a used copy of The Art of Japanese Ceramics by Tsugio Mikami. Yay! I've wanted this one for a while, and am therefore extremely chuffed.

Oh, chamekke - I have that problem all the time! Requesting books via BookMooch is even worse. However, to list purchases which have arrived in the last week:

Dava Sobel's The Planets (which I am enjoying, all nay-sayers to the contrary)
Matthew Craske's William Hogarth (British Artists S.)
and, today,
Con Men and Cutpurses, edited by Lucy Moore, in which so far I've enjoyed the tales of Mary Read and Anne Bonny...
&
The Proud Tower by Barbara Tuchman.
I have a massive 8 coming to me from BookMooch, oh my! Congratulations to everybody on their books!

(The touchstones WOULD NOT load. Authors were most recalcitrant. The only way I could find around it was to halve them, removing subtitles and authors' first names - in case any of you wonder at my eccentricity.)

Eurydice, when I read the name Matthew Craske I could not believe my eyes! He was the third out of four children (at the time sixteen) in a family in London, where I stayed to learn English as a university student. Even then he was extremely interested in art and, eventually, he went on to Oxford (or is it Cambridge?) where he is now a fellow. As a matter of fact, that Christmas, along with another friend, we gave him a book on Hogarth...
Thank you for mentioning him: it brought back very pleasant memories....
:-))

Aluvalibri, well done on your library sale finds! I loved both English Passengers and Birth of Venus. I haven't read the John Berendt, but loved Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

I was almost good this weekend. I went to my favourite bookshop Daunt's to buy my mother a copy of Jan Morris Venice as she has just booked her first trip there. Then I somehow fell into the Oxfam shop next more and bought five more books for me. I'm going to have to catalogue them later as I don't have them to hand at the moment, but they do include two Viragos (old style covers!!)

finebalance....envious envious envious I am but....the Strand is waiting......;-))

finebalance - I've fallen into the Oxfam shop there a few times! Usually I go there first. Once I'm armed with half a dozen or so books, I have an easier time in Daunt's!

Yesterday I took my younger son to a bookstore, with no intention to buy anything but....when I saw the last book by Susanna Clarke, The Ladies of Grace Adieu and other stories, I simply could not resist.
Having read and immensely enjoyed Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell I was very much looking forward to another book by her, and now I have it!

Today I bought Henry Hitchings', Defining the World. The Extraordinary Story of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary (Sorry for not linking the book but I'm new here and am feeling my way around in the dark).

jlong, linking to books and authors is easy - just put square brackets around them, (one bracket per side for titles, two for authors), and LT automatically links to it. It doesn't work all the time, unfortunately. Sometimes they just won't load.

I went to see Stuart McLean give a reading tonight, but it turned out he was just signing, not reading. I have a feeling a friend will buy me his latest book for Christmas, so I abstained. I found Capolan: Travels of a Vagabond Country by Nick Bantock in the bargain section, though. I'm quite pleased. I love his art.

Been a while since I posted in here, mostly because I'd been trying to minimize the amount of books I buy. I sort of went off the wagon last week, and this week I was spending my birthday money.

Last week or so:

Isaac Asimov - Banquets of the Black Widowers
Philip K. Dick - Cantata-140
Stephen Jay Gould - Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms
Alan Moore - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 1 and Tom Strong Vol. 1
Carl Sagan - Billions and Billions

This week:
Marc Abrahams - The Ig Nobel Prizes 1 and 2
Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine - Last Chance to See
Emmanuel Carrere - I am Alive and You are Dead
John Ciardi - For Instance
Harlan Ellison - The Harlan Ellison Hornbook

Well, I didn't buy it, but I recieved The Da Vinci Code in the mail today.

Killeymoon, thanks for the advice. I shall try your tip of ignoring Daunts until I've satisfied my book craving in the Oxfam next door. But they do lay their stock out so temptingly!

I nearly forgot to add my Oxfam haul. I ended up with
Hudson River Bracketed by Edith Wharton
The Village in the Jungle by Leonard Woolf
Treasure Hunt by M.J. Farrell
Loving by Henry Green
The Hill Road by Patrick O'Keeffe
and White Ghost Girls by Alice Greenway

Thanks, xicanti.

finebalance, The Hill Road is excellent. I hope we hear a lot more from O'Keeffe.

More from the library sale:

Shopaholic Takes Manhattan by Sophie Kinsella
Elvenbane by Mercedes Lackey and Andre Norton
The Outstretched Shadow by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory

Today I bought 30 minute meals:Express Lane by Rachael Ray. I love to watch her and she makes great dishes.

My mom adores Rachael Ray. I'm thinking of getting her as set of the cookbooks for Christmas.

Today I bought a book I saw yesterday at the YMCA. They have a little bookcase where you can leave books for other people to pick up for a quarter to benefit the youth programs. I picked up a romance novel called Underfoot by Leanne Banks which looks very cute. I've never read anything by her before.

I didn't technically buy it myself--I sighed at it and a friend, good man that he is, bought it for me--but I finally have The End by Lemony Snicket in my hands. Such mixed emotions! I'm looking forward to devouring it.

Thanks for the tip SeanLong. I hadn't come across O'Keefe before. Nor it seems has the previous owner paid much attention. The book was in mint condition.

Found myself back in the same Oxfam, this time trying to take in some books I am forcing myself to part with if I am still to be able to move in my flat. I didn't quite leave empty handed. There were some Viragos I couldn't resist

The People with the Dogs by Christina Stead
An Unsocial Socialist by Bernard Shaw and
The Holiday by Stevie Smith

and then a copy of Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma, which I've been meaning to read for a while.

My flat isn't getting much emptier.

finebalance, of course your flat is not getting much emptier but, let's face it, did you REALLY believe it would? ;-))))

Came home from Sam's Club with a trade paperback version of Running With Scissors. $8.

Killeymoon,
I am behind reading messages but had to comment - True History of the Kelly Gang - is very enjoyable. I have just begun some reading about the settlement of Australia and the penal colonies, and this certainly enlightens one about what happened to the generation after the original penal colony settlers. Very good read.

In today's mail from a bookseller in Minn., a fine US first ed. of Alex Garland's 1998 suspense novel The Tesseract, and from the Strand in NYC, a copy of John Fowles' The Journals: Volume II 1966-1990, which I'm really excited about and will probably be getting to very soon.

Technically, I didn't buy anything today...but 2 days ago, I bought a few books.

1) Memories of Ice by: Steven Erikson
2) The Alienist by: Caleb Carr --I read this several years ago and i loved it, but i lost my copy...saw it at Border's books, so I bought it
3) State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration by: James Risen ----This was one of the first so-called Anti-Bush books that i read, the others being The Assassins Gate (excellent)
Cobra II (excellent as well) Hubris by: Michael Issikoff and David Corn (everyone should read this book), Fiasco, The One Percent Doctrine....anyhoo, I only bought 3 books....and I look foward to a lesiurely weekend of reading.....

mamachunk

Technically, I didn't buy anything today...but my dad gave away one of my books so he partially reimbursed me by buying me Helltown.

I have checked all local used bookstores and no one has any Laurell Hamilton books. So I have been buying one at a time the books in the Anita Blake series. Yesterday I bought Bloody Bones.

SeanLong - Thanks for mentioning Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary a while back. I didn't know about this book, and, as I'm an admirer of Johnson's Dictionary, it sounds like a book I should read.

And, to no one in particular: I want an Oxfam store where I live! I guess I'll have to make do with the few used bookstores that are left, and, of course, my library book shop.

Maggie

I went to the "all the books you can fit in a bag for $3" sale at the local library in Pittsford NY. This was my first time trying this and though it brought on a small anxiety episode, all the grabbing, jostling and scooping of books in that frenetic haste of hands and bodies, I'm discovering a few interesting items as I unpack.

So far:
Festive Chocolate by Peter G. Rose
A handbook for Scholars by Mary-Claire van Leunen
Singer Sewingbook: A complete guide to sewing (1972 edition)
Use both Sides of Your Brain by Tony Buzan
Public Speaking: A Process Approach Media Edition by Donna D Sellnow
(My long coveted HARDBACK edition) An Incomplete Education
The Inventive Writer-the professional copy- by G Scott Cawelti and Jeffrey L Duncan
...and about 20 or so more I've yet to unpack. Good book day for me.

I needed some 'comfort food' (this is also what books are to me) and so I went to a local Goodwill store. I was lucky to find three books (hardbacks) in excellent condition:
The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith
A Bloodsmoor Romance by Joyce Carol Oates
The ape who guards the balance by Elizabeth Peters
And, besides, all three first editions. That did make my day!
:-))

The mail has just arrived---and I heard the unmistakable sound of cardboard scraping across the porch. A BOX! No doubt it contains books, as I haven't ordered anything else lately. Stand by for the report!

Yes. Books it is. Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes for my brother's Christmas present (I'm sure there's no danger of him reading this post); something for my daughter's Christmas present, which I will not name, because she just may be checking this board; and Walker Percy Remembered for myself. All from The Reader's Subscription book club, which I recommend.

I just got an e-mail informing me that my Chapters.ca order, (including copies of New Moon by Stephenie Meyer and Wolfrider volume 1 by Wendy and Richard Pini has shipped. Yay!

I resisted the library book sale today, even though the prices were all reduced because we've just entered the second week. I think I'll be able to resist until next week, when the price drops yet again... to an amazing $2.25 per bag, stuffed full of whatever I'd like! I think I'll end up with a lot of things I don't really need.

Under Orders by Dick Francis, The Great Unraveling by Paul Krugman, and The Ape Who Guards the Balance by Elizabeth Peters. I've recently discovered Peters' Peabody mysteries and have been buying them one by one after reading them from the library.

The Krugman book was a $4.99 clearance item at Borders.

Happy happy when I came home and....what did I find? My new copy of Istanbul: Memories and the City by Orhan Pamuk, which came in the mail today. Yeeeeeeeeeepppppppeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!

This afternoon I purchased Alice Munro's latest collection of stories, The View From Castle Rock.

I purchased a personalized and autographed copy of Gregory Kelser's Tales From Michigan State Basketball - the book is not due out til January 2007. His wife is a co-worker and my hair stylist. We have known each other for approx. 17 years. They both make a wonderful couple. I wish Greg Kelser much luck in his book sales. I paid full price to support his endeavor.

Greetings. Tis my first time to post on the forum, although I love adding and tagging my books on here. I found some rather promising treasures at the Salvation Army.
A Bargain for Frances by Russell and Lilian Hoban (I'm trying to re-collect all the books I had as a kid)
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
The Pocket Book of Great Operas by Henry W. Simon and Abraham Veinus
Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Something Happened by Joseph Heller (Has anyone read this? I adored Catch 22 and am curious as to how this one will turn out.)
and Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi I've been itching to get my grubby hands on this one.

From Daedalus today:

Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, Brendan Gill's Here at the New Yorker and A.J. Liebling's collection of writings, Just Enough Liebling.

Well, they're not actually in my hands, but today I ordered from Amazon The Ladies' Paradise by Emile Zola, City of Fallen Angels by John Berendt, which I have to thank aluvalibri for, as I didn't previously realise he'd written on Venice, and
Kartography by Kamila Shamsie, which has been on my wishlist for a while.

The dangerous thing about Amazon is that you can be chained to your desk, and still manage to go shopping!

I think it was a reaction to Saturday when my partner frogmarched me into Oxfam and made me part with a bag of books, without stopping to browse for more!

finebalance, how did he DARE doing that?????
I wonder what the Zola's you mention is titled in Italian.....I used to love his books as a teenager and read almost all of them...:-))

I picked up Knight of Darkness by Kinley MacGregor for my mom and the anthology Love at First Bite for myself tonight.

I went to Borders today and picked up

Wild Fire by: Nelson Demille

The Tenth Circle by:Jodi Picoult

Running With Scissors by: Augusten Burroughs

mamachunk

Aluvalibri, I think he thought he had my best interests at heart! He's seen my unread book pile, sorry, piles (ok three bookcases at last count). I don't know the Zola, but it had a fascinating review a while ago - and I went to see Therese Raquin on Tuesday evening, which has set me off on a bit of a Zola hunt. I never managed to read any of his work in my teens. Yet another gap in my literary education that needs filling....more books to buy!

finebalance, all these books (Zola's, I mean), are part of the so called Rougon-Macquart series.
The most famous are Germinal, Nana, and L'Assommoir, but I remember enjoying very much Au bonheur des dames. Of course, I read them all in the Italian translation, but I am giving you the French titles as that will make it easier for you to find them.
I know, I am wicked because I am likely to add more stuff to your TBR pile(s), but I can't help it.....eh eh eh eh......;-))

Latest arrivals ~

The Map Book by Peter Barker (well edited by him)
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
Thunderstruck by Erik Larson
and
The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox

My TBR shelf is very crowded now!

I've gotten several boxes this week as I have been spending my birthday money over the past 10 days or so! LOL

Today I got 2 books by a new author I haven't tried before:

Shoofly Pie and Chop Shop by Tim Downs (he's actually a Christian author and I'm picky when it comes to Christian fiction, but the books are about a forensic entomologist so I thought I'd give them a try, hehe)

From Amazon:

The Prestige by Christopher Priest
King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard
Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
Nicholas Nickleby by Dickens
The first 4 books in the Dame Frevisse Medieval Mystery series (I've read most of her later ones but our library doesn't have any of the first 6 or so!)
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind

and a couple of Christmas/Advent books and one homeschooling book.

Ouch. :oP

Today my husband and I went to a Book Fair.....oh dear! We bought a beautiful old copy of Milton for our daughter for Christmas (how's that for forward planning!) I bought him a Biggles to add to his collection, and I bought Countryman on The Moors and The making of Modern London. I don't know what my husband bought, as he made me go away...so I suspect there is a Christmas present for me being hidden away somewhere!

The intervention will soon be at hand. I have been out of control the last few days. First, I ordered eight books from Children's Book of the Month Club (beware: they suck you in but it's really not worth it)...

then I bought 28 volumes at my college's library sale (including Destiny by Elizabeth Haydon, Great Documents of Western Civilization, THe Hammer and the Cross, John Milton, and quite a few other scholarly texts that I will probably never read all the way through)...

and finally, about half an hour ago, I placed another online order for ten kids' books (Diary of a Wombat was among them--too cute to pass up at 50% off--as were Guess How Much I Love You--for my new nephew, otherwise known as the new excuse to buy books--The Book Thief, The Princess Knight, and an all-in-one volume of the Madeleine L'Engle Time series.

THe good news is that I only spent $9 on all 28 books from the library sale.

The bad news is that the other 18 volumes added up to about $200. I think I may need professional help for my addiction. Have they invented biblioholic gum yet?

Just been delivered:
The Subterranean Railway by Christian Wolmar
The Faber Book of Exploration ed.by Benedict Allen
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Can't wait.

I've been really good about buying books lately, but today I stopped into my favourite used bookstore on the offhand chance that they'd have something I wanted and I ended up coming away with a copy of Streams of Silver by R.A. Salvatore. This whole series meant a lot to me when I was in my junior high years, so I've decided to reread them. The first one was very poorly written, but somehow this didn't discourage me. I actually had a request in for this one at the library, but I figured what the hell. It was only $3, and I'll probably keep it anyways.

Yesterday, when I got home, I found a little package waiting for me. It contanied Ex libris: confessions of a common reader by Anne Fadiman. That was a lovely surprise in an otherwise not so special day!

beserene sez: "Have they invented biblioholic gum yet?"

Ha! I'd take that almost as fast as Nicorette!

beserene, Linkmeister -

do you know about the "Library Thing-ers Anonymous" Group?

...check it out....

WooHoo! No, I hadn't seen that one. I am so there! ;)

The library's book sale moved into Week Three yesterday, so everything was $2.25 per bag.

Sigh.

Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon
Hiding My Candy by The Lady Chablis
What Was Always Hers by Uma Parameswaran
Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates
Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier
The Ruins of Ambrai by Melanie Rawn
Lost August by Esta Spalding

I was led seriously astray by a fellow LTer who this evening introduced me to Strand books in New York. The only question is how I'm going to get my bargain haul home to the UK. It includes:
The Shutter of Snow by Emily Holmes Coleman,
Two Days in Aragon by Molly Keane both Viragos, and both fab gifts from said LTer.
I also managed to acquire in my own right
The Task of This Translator by Todd Hasak-Lowy,
Elizabeth Buchan's Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman,
Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper by Harriet Scott Chessman,
The Bacon Fancier by Alan Isler,
Any Bitter Thing by Monica Wood,
Kaye Gibbons Ellen Foster and the life all around me by Ellen Foster and
The Known World by Edward P. Jones.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that I now can't close my suitcase!

P.S Aluvalibri - I adored Ex Libris. I am sure you will recognise most if not all of the behaviour!

Well, I must say that it is GREAT to lead someone astray...eh eh eh eh....
The trip to the Strand was fantastic, and obviously I also did my part in buying, even though most books were for other people (partner, children, led-astray-friend...). Also, I got a wonderful gift from said friend, finally a Persephone book all mine!
It is Gardener's Nightcap by Muriel Stuart(and I don't know why it does not touchstone!)
On my own, I bought what follows:
The dud avocado by Elaine Dundy
Wise children by Angela Carter, and
Star quality the collected stories by Noel Coward.
Oh, how happy I am!!!!!

I had Angela Carter's Burning Your Boats in the mail today.
And I finally got my copy of Lost Girls by Alan Moore. Already when I saw it standing on the pick-up shelf at the bookstore I knew the $100 were so worth it. I have waited for it for a long time and finally it's mine! I've had it right next to me ever since I got home half an hour ago and can't wait to read it.

So many books!

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
Angels by Marian Keyes
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
Puppies for Dummies by Sarah Hodgson
Making Faces by Kevyn Aucoin
The Breakfast Cereal Gourmet by David Hoffman
Rick & Lanie's Excellent Kitchen Adventures by Rick Bayless and Lanie Bayless

Fiction! Mystery! Pets! Cooking! Fashion! What a happy book day.

Friday, I went to Borders on my lunch hour and bought
Jaded Tasks BY: Wayne Madsen
and The Alchemist BY: Paulo Coelho

Tonight I went to Barnes & Nobles and bought Madness and Civilization BY: Michel Foucault

Dracula BY: Bram Stoker

Endgame Volume 2 Resistance BY: Derrick Jensen

I also bought the latest CD from Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens) and a CD of Paul Van Dyk's. All in all it was a good shopping day.

mamachunk

LTers Anonymous, eh? Well, they do say that the first step is admitting you have a problem. But what if I'm not ready to be cured?

Case in point:
The Golden Bough
And the People Could Fly
When God Was a Woman

All purchased in the used book section of my local Schuler Books (a local chain that everyone around here adores, despite the laconic nature of their staff).

Okay I keep promising myself I won't buy anything more until after Christmas. Well..yesterday I purchased only 2!
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Sentenced to Die by J.A. Jance

Since my son had to return two books to our local "tiny" library, I HAD to check the books they have for sale, of course. So, I came back with

The constant gardener by John Le Carre
The Opium Clerk by Kunal Basu
The Devil's chimney by Anne Landsman

On top of that, when I got home and collected my mail, I found

The ruby in her navel by Barry Unsworth, which I had ordered a few days ago.
I know I keep saying I will stop buying books, but there are so many interesting ones, and they DO need a home, don't they???
:-))

They DO need a home. Think of all those poor, lonely books out there that have no one to take them home, find them a nice spot on a shelf (or stack, or floor) and then get around to reading them along with the other 267 unread books on the shelf/stack/floor. We must save them.

I'm doing my part today:
2 copies of Wintersmith, the New Tiffany Aching novel by Terry Pratchett (one copy is for me, the other is a Christmas gift for my sister--we don't share)
just one copy of The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

That's right--saving the world three books at a time.

I finally gave in and bought British Style, a coffee table book about British interiors. I hope to find it in the mail when I return from university :)

I couldn't resist one more trip to Strand bookstore before I left New York. But I did limit myself to one book A Venetian Affair by Andrea Di Robilant. Another book found a loving home!

Oh! To know that all these books have found a loving home makes me feel soooooooooooo good!!!!!
:-))

P.S. And yesterday I got two more Viragos in the mail....
*she sighs with happiness*

Today, I've ordered Siddharta by Hermann Hesse, and am impatiently awaiting the delivery of several others. Where is that postman? Come on!

Just got back from Barnes and Noble, having bought the Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. I was going to buy a copy of the Prophet by Kahlil Gibran as well, but my mom had a copy of it that she gave me instead, so I saved about $15, YAY!

I acquired 2 more Jean Plaidy books and my husband picked up a poker book. I got: The Courts of Love and Royal Road to Fotheringhay. He got: Busting Vegas: A True Story of Monumental Excess, Sex, Love, Violence and Beating the Odds. I have got to stay out of Barnes & Noble!

Everyone else is acquiring such lofty, intelligent books. Today I bought The Halfling's Gem by R.A. Salvatore and borrowed The Bad Beginning and The Reptile Room, (both by Lemony Snicket), from the library.

Had to stop into the local library in my parents' town on the way home for thanksgiving. The chance to browse a different Friends of the Library booksale was just too tempting to resist.

Picked up:
Black Dogs by Ian McEwan
The Cider House Rules by John Irving
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
Empire Falls by Richard Russo
Magician: Apprentice by Raymond Feist
A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

...for only $4.50, though.

The postman finally arrived!

Together with a pile of bills, he bestowed upon me..

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood. What to read first? Best get on with my 'to read' pile!

Today I picked up.

Seed to Seed New
How the Leopard Changes its Spots Used

Almost done with a few books, so gotta refresh the bottom slots on the reading queue.

Stopped by Barnes & Noble again today. Dangerous thing to do, but I squeaked out the door with

The Goose Girl for my cousin (I just finished reading my own copy of this, bought previously, and really enjoyed it).
Celebrations: Rituals of Peace and Prayer for my aunt.

Feeling the Christmas shopping love today.

I had my first trade-in experience today. About ten years ago, when I was very into fantasy, my grandparents' neighbor gave me a HUGE bag of publishers' remainders she'd gotten from a friend. (This is was a lovely gesture, but it was also the beginning of my to-be-read stack which is now, um, way too large). I read most of them, but there were several that were the second or third volumes in trilogies. I never did read them, so today I took them into my favourite used bookstore, along with a few other things. They couldn't use everything I had, but I got rid of most of them. I exchanged them for:

Homeland by R.A. Salvatore
Exile by R.A. Salvatore
Starless Night by R.A. Salvatore
To Green Angel Tower by Tad Williams

I've been reading all of Salvatore's early stuff because I loved his books when I was younger. I'm enjoying them again, but I'm glad I didn't have to pay for these ones as they'd definitely an escapist/guilty pleasure thing for me.

...and today, in the mail, came a box....with SEVEN Viragos to add to my collection!!!!!!!! Here they are:

The fruit of the tree by Edith Wharton
Roman fever by Edith Wharton
The reef by Edith Wharton
Old New York by Edith Wharton
The three sisters by May Sinclair
Virginia by Ellen Glasgow
Hester by Mrs Oliphant

It appears that some of these titles do not touchstone and, actually, The Three Sisters appears as The Three Incestuous Sisters...fancy that! I never knew the Brontes were incestuous!

;-)

Went to B&N before heading off to church and bought 3 books:
Dear John by Nicholas Sparks
Creepers by David Morrell
The Christmas Thief by Mary Higgins Clark

Stopped at B&N today. Picked up a nice copy of Twas the Night Before Christmas for my granddaughter and Haweswater by Sarah Hall for myself.

Over the weekend I picked up a collection of stories by Charles D'Ambrosio titled The Dead Fish Museum.

I had to get to grown up books today for book baskets we are raffling off at my son's school. Since I read YA Lit, romance and fantasy lets just say I was at a bit of a loss. I finally went with two books from authors that live in the area:

St. Alban's Fire by Archer Mayor and a book called Identical Harts by Lou Barber

The Best of Abbie Hoffman, $6.50, at 12th Street Books, NYC

I found myself on Lamb's Conduit Street again last night. How could I not go into Persephone books? I managed (generally) to limit myself to buying presents, a copy of The Gardener's Nightcap and Good Things in England by Florence White but slipped in a copy of Monica Dickens' Mariana for myself. There was also the bookshop I passed on the way that was selling half price paperbacks, so I bought a cheap copy of The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. And that's not counting the Amazon orders arriving (again, presents for others).

That Persephone Bookstore is sooooo tempting, isn't it? ;-)
I think you will enjoy The Historian, I did.
The Gardener's Nightcap is great!!!!!
:-))

Thanks Aluvalibri!

I'm trying to work out whether The Historian goes on holiday with me. The reading pile is otherwise rather dominated with books by Brazilian authors. What if I don't get on with them?!

1776 by David MCCullough -- 1st ed. hardcover for $10 at Westsider Books, Upper West Side, NYC

Bought Piggy in the Puddle for my youngest sister. She's 17, but this was her favorite book during the toddler years (so much so that everyone in the family has the thing practically memorized) and her pet rat ate her old copy a couple of months ago. It'll go in her Christmas stocking, and we'll probably experience a renaissance of those long memorized lines... "see the piggy, see the puddle, see the muddy little puddle, see the piggy in the middle of the muddy little puddle..."

I bought Irish Witchcraft from an Irish Witch yesterday and the day before I bought three great cookbooks, on sale nevertheless...on pancakes, Italian cuisine and vegetable dishes from a famous German TV cook. Unfortunately, none of them is for me, but christmas presents :( I *may* go back and get myself a copy of the Italian cookbook, though 8)

Luckily wednesday before the snow/ice storm moved across Tulsa I went into Barnes and Noble and bought a gift card. Since I have been stuck in doors for the last couple days I finally went to B&N.com and used the gift card. Since hubby was wanting some books for christmas I was able to get a couple of them for him.
Allen Ginsberg: Collected Poems 1947-1997
by Allen Ginsberg

Emma by Jane Austen
Opus by Berke Breathed
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austin

Today came home with Next by Michael Crichton and Mark Twain Selected Works.

This is the booty I got in my foray to a library sale over the weekend:

The awakening and selected stories by Kate Chopin
To be in England by Richard D. Altick
The fabulous originals by Irving Wallace
The heirs of the kingdom by Zoe Oldenbourg
The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart
Selected prose by Max Beerbohm
The Italian by Ann Radcliffe
The Chinese bell murders by Robert van Gulik
Jeeves in the morning and Jeeves and the tie that binds by P.G. Wodehouse
The pursuit of love and Love in a cold climate by Nancy Mitford
Paris in the Twentieth Century by Jules Verne

Now, for a while, I can be happy.
:-))

Hmm, I amazoned a copy of the new Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon, not realising quite how big it is!

I just picked up Drift House The First Voyage by Dale Peck and a hardcover copy of State of Fear by Michael Crichton (probably won't read it since I have the paperback, but it'll look nicer in the collection.)

I didn't buy them, but I got them in the mail as a gift from my honey. Lately, he's been very supportive of my LT addiction and sending me lots of good books. Gotta love that in a man:)

Here's the latest two:
Zermatt: A Novel by Frank Schaeffer
Saving Grandma by Frank Shcaeffer

Of course they would ship in reverse order, so I'm still waiting on the first to begin reading the trilogy. My Honey thought I'd appreciate the story since I grew up with one half my family religious zealots in an evangelical sect of Christianity and I spent time as a missionary overseas in my youth.

I went and ordered more Christmas gifts from amazon today. Although she doesn't know it yet my mom bought me The Weather Warden series by Rachel Caine along with Tinker by Wen Spencer.

For my co-workers I bought The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls and Stash Envy: And Other Quilting Confessions And Adventures by Lisa Boyer

and for my mom I bought Master of Wolves by Angela Knight.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time and Destination Morgue! from a wonderful shop, Athenaeum Boekhandel & Nieuwscentrum in Spui, Amsterdam. I already have the Haddon in hardback but the borrower shows no signs of returning it. *scowl.

Here are some of my latest purchases for this week:

Had A Good Time: Stories From American Postcards by Robert Olen Butler
Zazie in the Metro by Raymond Queneau
Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau
Who Will Run The Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore

I just got back from a trip where I expected to buy tons and tons of books. Unfortunately, that didn't pan out. One week, and all I got was:

Sojourn by R.A. Salvatore
The Stud by Jackie Collins
Tailchaser's Song by Tad Williams

Actually didn't buy them today, (didn't know about this site until yesterday), but bought them yesterday.

All Dover Thrift Editions

The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
White Fang by Jack London
Treasure Island by Robert Lewis Stevenson
Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

Six brand new books for $7.50.

I know, I know, they are not the "best" editions of these classics. But right now I am interested in the contents, not the container. I will keep my eye out for "better" containers at library book sales and such.

Talking about library book sales, I bought 22 book for $52.00 last month. Dang I love those things.

I found a stall in Greenwich Market on Friday: all books 50p. I got five novels I used to own and a selection of Margery Allingham short stories which is excellent. I also stopped in at the secondhand bookshop and got The Penguin Dorothy Parker and Peter Acrkroyd's T S Eliot biography, which is fascinating.

Bill,
there is nothing wrong with the Dover editions. I own quite a few myself, and I just ordered four books from them on line as Christmas gifts! They are inexpensive, but the text is the same, and so, what else do you need?

aluvalibri

I know that, but I have some snobish book friends that look down their noses at anything in paper back, and the Dover Thrift Editions in particular.

I have twelve of them so far, all but a few were bought new, some used at library book sales. I even have Pensees by Blaise Pascal in the Dover Philosophical Classics edition.

I am trying to not only build a respectable library, but I am also trying to read as many "classics" as possible. I never went to college, so I missed out on reading a lot of stuff that others kind of take for granted. So at 40, I have set out to correct this defect and read as much as possible. So that is why I like the cheap editions, they are cheap! I have some beautifully bound older books of some of the classics, which I just love. But for now, I am after content, not container.

Thanks for the encouragement. I will troll the only "big box" book store here in my sleeply little town once a month and snag all the Dover's they got . But I will also troll the other places looking for hard bound editions of them to add to the book shelf.

Ten of the 13 books I bought Friday (at a thrift shop - $5.80 US) were paperbacks. You are not alone in looking for cheap.

I picked up Stephen King's Cell in paperback (finally!) today. It's in that weird new format, that 7x4 or whatever. Not sure how I feel about that yet. I also grabbed The Other Boleyn Girl by Phillipa Gregory off the bargain book racks at Borders. I've been wanting to read something by her for a while, but I never seem to catch her books on the shelf at the library. Needless to say, I was very happy to find one for $3.99, lol.

501 Must-Read Books - a holiday present for my aunt. She's very involved with her book club, so I thought this would make a good gift for her.

The Morning Star by Nick Bantock - I've been wanting this book for ages, so I was incredibly happy to see it in Chapters's bargain section for $7. Now I can finally see how the whole series turns out.

Bear Stays Up for Christmas by Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman and My Nursery Rhyme Pop-Up Book It's been a looong time since I had reason to buy a children's book for anyone; but I picked my cousin's little boy in our extended family gift exchange. Woot!

from alias books on sawtelle:

the brief and frightening reign of phil - george saunders -

some prefer nettles - junichiro tanizaki -

the gourmet club - junichiro tanizaki - uncorrected proof -

the name of the rose - umberto eco -

the rural trilogy (blood wedding/yerma/the house of bernarda alba) - federico garcia lorca -

the emigrants - wg sebold -

meeting at the milestone - sigurd hoel -

word for word/essays on the art of language - volume 1 - cid corman -

at their word/essays on the arts of language - volume 2 - cid corman -

I bought Mary Queen of Scots by Margaret George last night {does that count?} I've read sevral of her books and can't wait to read this.

Found a used bookstore near to where I work and came home with:

Gorky Park in hardcover
Red Square in hardcover
Murder in Triplicate - a PD James Anthology in hardcover
and
Middlesex in trade paperback

I consider buying only 4 to be quite restrained - I was supposed to be Christmas shopping for other people!!

I visited our local used book store and followed up with a stop at the bargain books section of Chapters and came away with this rather nice little haul:

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
The Captain's Peril by William Shatner
Congo by Michael Crichton
The Beach House by James Patterson
Mosaic (Star Trek: Voyager) by Jeri Taylor
Foreign Foes by Dave Galanter
The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel
Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth's Last Days by Tim F. LaHaye & Jerry B. Jenkins
Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King

Arrived from Amazon for Christmas gifts to others:

The Assassins Gate by George Packer and Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran

The special edition of Lisey's Story came the other day - nice slipcase and built-in bookmark. Oh how my TBR list grows!

It's a shame this thread seems to have dwindled since Christmas - Is everyone still catching up with reading the books they were given as presents? Anyway I've just bought Justin Cartwright's latest - The Song before it is Sung - having this afternoon finished his previous one, The Promise of Happiness. And since I bought it after hearing him read bits and talk about his work, I now know that he is not only a wise and intelligent writer, but also as far as I can tell a very nice man.

It hasn't dwindled - people just started post in Message Board II and March Edition. This one got too long and unwieldy, so new ones were started.

just bought the complete zola in translation on cd-rom for $12. It hasn't arrived yet, and I'm hoping it isn't a fraud and that the rognon-maquart novels are on it. I guess time has passed, and the translations are in the public domain, but $12 for all the zola seems like a fairy tale. we shall see. Also in the mail came the art of filo by marti sousanis, about making b'steela, blintses!! and spanakopita,plus how to make your own filo (with egg) and why not to use salted butter (the salt builds up and wrecks the texture). Blintses in filo sounds absolutely wrong, since they are supposed to be made with a crepe batter, and are not crispy, but she says they were a big hit.

I went to the local hospital's book sale and picked up:

The Burglar in the Library (I've read it)
Night Passage
Soprano and the Sorceress
The Wee Free Men
A First Ed Copy of the Final Solution (I've read it)
Another hard cover copy of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (read)
The New Laurel's Kitchen (Signed by laurel)
and The Silver Palate Cookbook

for $19.00

I bought Romola by George Elliot, a historical novel set in Renaissance Florence at the time of Savonarola.

Quite a lot...
the gigantic Kristeva reader, Denise Levertov, Beowulf by Seamus Heaney, King's Peace and Farthing by Jo Walton, Remains of the Day, Trilogy by H.D., Singer From the Sea by Sheri Tepper...

I kind of went on a splurge yesterday.

#395 - I want to know how you liked Beowulf when you've read it. I remember reading an article (or maybe a release?) about it and had forgotten to look for it.

TO EVERYONE

Since this thread is waaay too long, could you please post in the What did YOU buy today? April??
We shall also start one for May and so on.
See you all.

:-))