Books Brought Home May/June 2018

Matchmaking for Beginners by Maddie Dawson

The Weight of Zero by Karen Fortunati; Paris by the book by Callum Callanan; the Room on Rue Amelie by Kristin Harmel; and You Me Everything by Catherine Isaac

Seven Fallen Feathers by Tanya Talaga and Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three by David Plante

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells

A Dark So Deadly by Stuart MacBride

Under the Empyrean Sky, Blightborn, and The Harvest (The Heartland Trilogy) by Chuck Wendig

JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot . . . by (Col.) L. Fletcher Prouty a bargain book at Barnes & Noble -- It goes back to John F. Kennedyʻs approach to North Vietnam and the Viet Congʻs confrontation of the fledgling South Vietnam state. I had read a lot about it, and was surprised that B & N had been having trouble moving it.

I met up with my parents and siblings in Hawaii for a vacation, I coming from Japan, them arriving from the mainland. Since my parents were coming from the mainland I asked them to bring some of the unread books I left behind when I moved. They brought me:

Jonathan D. Spence : The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution
Fyodor Dostoevsky : The Brothers Karamazov
Upton Sinclair : Oil
John Steinbeck : East of Eden
Natsume Soseki : Kokoro
Kenzaburo Oe : A Personal Matter
Victor Hugo : Bug-Jargal

Then after a visit to the wonderfully done Pearl Harbor memorial I picked up some nonfiction from their gift shop. I was very looking forward to this as I knew there would probably be lots of tempting books. I wasn't disappointed! (Just now noticing two are by the same author.)

Gordon W. Prange : At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor
Gordon W. Prange : God's Samurai: Lead Pilot at Pearl Harbor
Lester I. Tenney : My Hitch in Hell: The Bataan Death March
Kazuo Sakamaki : I Attacked Pearl Harbor

And then at the airport book shop I managed to pick up one more book.

Han Kang : Human Acts

I didn't enjoy Han Kang's The Vegetarian but I was told to read this one before giving up on her so I was happy to see it at the airport. Now I need to go read all of these! I've just added 3500 pages to my TBR pile so I've given myself quite the task!

The New Voices of Fantasy edited by Peter S. Beagle

> I read At Dawn We Slept several years ago. It was excellent and fascinating, if over inclusive of his research. I also have East of Eden and A Personal Matter on Mt. TBR.

The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh

In the Distance by Hernan Diaz

I stopped by my local independent bookstore and came away with
Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal
and
Duma Key by Stephen King

>9 whymaggiemay:

That's excellent to hear, thank you! I am very much looking forward to it. I don't think I'll get to East of Eden anytime soon since I just recently read Grapes of Wrath but I can see myself possibly reading A Personal Matter in the next month or so. At least that's my intention! :)

#9 Love the Mt. TBR.
Leona

Swords and Crowns and Rings by Ruth Park

Never one to pass up a free book, just downloaded Tor.com's freebie of The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi.

Received a review copy of A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe by Alex White.

I bought The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien at a thrift store yesterday.
Leona

Found an uncorrected proof of The Day of the Dead by Nicci French waiting for me when I got home today.

Curious about The Postmortal by Drew Magary so I picked it up.

These arrived yesterday from the good folk at Amazon- The Outsider by Stephen King and The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner

Totally forgot about getting 84K by Claire North earlier this week.

Received through Bookmooch The Fine Art of Literary Mayhem.

Snagged A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers.

The Lost Vintage by Ann Mah delivered at my doorstep yesterday. I won in a contest.

Downloaded to Kindle:

Facts and Fears
The Perfect Horse
Mrs. Roosevelt's Confidante
Abide With Me
As Good As Gone
The Rescue Artist

Last Stories by William Trevor
Apartment in Athens by Glenway Wescott
The Restless Wave by John McCain and Mark Salter

>22 seitherin: re 84K, I did not realize Claire North has a new book out! Loved the first fifteen lives of harry august and the sudden appearance of hope. The new one looks a lot darker. Let me know what you think.

>28 cindydavid4: Will do, but it will be a while before I read it. Have 10 books in my stack before I get to it . . . unless I cheat.

>29 seitherin: Only 10? Slacker..

>30 cindydavid4: Oh, no, not just 10. That's just the top of the stack my reading app displays for me. I usually have three reads going at a time, each on a different device. On one of them, I read thru the top of the list. On the others, I pick something at random from somewhere usually further down the list. Makes me feel productive to work my way thru the top of the pile. :D

The Element of Fire by Martha Wells

Sunday Silence by Nicci French - I seem to be reading these in reverse order. Oh, well, such is life.

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

Dragon Rider by Cornelia Funke

>33 mollygrace:

I just read that one in Japanese and am happy to see it came out in English! Hope everyone enjoys it as much as I did.

In This House of Brede
Black Narcissus

Both books are by Rumer Godden

Two new Scandinavian crime, freshly arrived by post from Belgium:

Dregs by Jørn Lier Horst - Norway
The Defenceless by Kati Hiekkapelto - Finland

I visited a new-to-me bookstore in Foley, Alabama and got

The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent for my book club
and
The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King for a Litsy buddy read.

Went to B&N today and found

Coffin Corner Boys

Blue Monday by Nicci French

My Early Reviewer, If A Horse Had Words by Kelly Cooper & Lucy Eldridge, came in the mail.

A Swedish crime novel arrived in the mail today from the Netherlands. I love seeing which random country my used books come from!

Cinderella Girl by Carin Gerhardsen

Breakfast with the Nikolides by Rumer Godden

The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai

Why am I still buying books when I'm having so much trouble reading? Perhaps it works this way: Despite my silly problems, Mount TBR still demands to be fed.

Anyway, I've put some thought into these selections, thinking perhaps a switch to shorter forms might be helpful: I still needed one novel, maybe because the title sounds comforting, though the bright cover sort of screams at me:

There, There by Tommy Orange

Poetry:

Say Something Back by Denise Riley
4:30 Movie by Donna Masini

Novella (or maybe just a very short novel:

The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West

Stories by three novelists I admire:

Days of Awe by A. M. Homes
Fight No More by Lydia Millet
Some Trick by Helen DeWitt

And, for a total change of pace . . .

I'm Keith Hernandez: A Memoir -- this one because of three years in the early 80s when I lived alone in a new town, one I was never comfortable in . . . I spent the first summer shelving my books and watching cable TV (a new experience for me -- 30 Channels!) One of the channels televised the Mets games-- the team were trying to "rebuild" and had a lot of young players, some very promising, others just trying to hold on. I was watching the day Keith Hernandez first arrived to meet his new team (he'd been traded from St. Louise) and I found it interesting how quickly he became the leader in the infield, encouraging the younger players, making first base his own. I didn't know much about him, but I loved baseball, and watching that young team develop those first few years was fascinating. The three Mets announcers: Kiner, McCarver, and Steve Zabriskie were great storytellers. I learned so much about baseball from them. I'd moved on (to a new town, a much better fit for me, and was going back to college during summers, so I was no longer a fan by the time the Mets won the World Series in 1986. Some of those young players I'd been so fond of were gone by then: traded away, in the minors, out of baseball altogether. I'd have rather seen those fellows win it all -- they accomplished a lot in the years I'd watched them, and of course Hernandez (and Gooden and Strawberry) were a big part of that. But I retain a special feeling for that time -- that first day when Hernandez arrived and something magical seemed to happen. This book probably has absolutely nothing to do with that period of Keith's life (I haven't had the courage to look in the index), but if it gets me reading for awhile it will be a good thing. If not, bringing back those memories will be enough.

Picked up the first six Infinity Project books edited by Jonathan Strahan:

Engineering Infinity
Edge of Infinity
Reach for Infinity
Meeting Infinity
Bridging Infinity
Infinity Wars

Other People's Houses by Lore Segal
Paper Ghosts by Julia Heaberlin
The Overstory by Richard Powers
Upstate by James Wood
History of a Suicide by Jill Bialosky

A Moonless, Starless Sky by Alexis Okeowa
The Paris Architect by Charles Belfoure
Attending: Medicine, Mindfulness, and Humanity by Dr. Ronald Epstein M. D.

In the mail:
The Last Lullaby by Carin Gerhardsen
The Lost Boy by Camilla Lackberg

From The Salvation Army Thrift Store:
The Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy by Rachel Joyce
A Million Little Pieces by James Frey

Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
Nightflyers: The Illustrated Edition by George R. R. Martin

New thread - http://www.librarything.com/topic/293064

A highly-touted first novel: Timekeeper by Tara Sim
Iʻm as yet undecided whether it deserves the "touts". Iʻve started The Third Translation by Matt Bondurant (Had not even heard of him before being in LT.) Irritates me at times, but seems, overall, to be worth reading.
Gray Ghosts and Rebel Raiders by a Southern (?) historian Virgil Carrington Jones with a foreword by Bruce Catton. His main point is to refute the conventional
wisdom which says that the raiders (aka "Irregulars" and by The Union, "bushwhackers",
didnʻt really have much effect on the war. Any comments on the revisionism?