Books Brought Home May/June 2019

I'm so proud of myself. So far I've managed not to buy a book today.

Same here !! not from want of trawling my charity shops.

Rupert Sheldrake's "The Rebirth of Nature: the Greening of
Science and God" -- a Shledrake title that I didn't previously
know of.

Bernie Clark's From the Gita to the Grail

plus David McCullough's "1776" in the Large Type ed.

I fell off the wagon. Oh, well...

The Shark by Mary Burton

um...I had 4 delivered today and I have more coming next week. So far...
The Good Daughter by Karin Slaughter
The Night Visitors by Carol Goodman
Tear Me Apart by J.T. Ellison
The Perfect Stranger by Megan Miranda

The Good Father by Noah Hawley
a Book Club (at the local library) selection; and less
than 7 days to read it while it's rubbing elbows
with 17 other library books, most of them novels.

Improvement by Joan Silber

Thin Air by Lisa Gray

>4 seitherin: That's 2 days though! Nice job!

I ordered Ban This Book by Alan Gratz from Scholastic with my bonus points and it arrived today. I love getting book mail at school!

>8 PaperbackPirate: Thin Air doesn't count because it's a freebie as part of my Amazon Prime membership. ;D

>10 seitherin: Ok good to know, then I'm not counting mine either. LOL!

Picture by Lillian Ross

>11 PaperbackPirate: The things we do for books. ;D

Called into my local library to collect a DVD that I had reserved and as I passed the book stand that carried an assortment of donated books all labelled "Grab And Go" i walked out with three!!!

Autumn by Ali Smith
Women Of Sand And Myrrh by Hanan Al-Shaykh
Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier

>14 aussieh: I loved Burning Bright! It's probably my favorite by Chevalier.

Empire of Grass by Tad Williams

Almost a year and a half after I'd been notified I'd won an uncorrected proof, I finally received a copy of The Great Halifax Explosion by John U. Bacon.

Collected Poems by Wendell Berry:

for a Book Club event (Public Library) at which W.B.
was of course to be the subject, not, unfortunately, the
speaker.*

*She was local author/editor Susan Schultz.

Here But Not Here: My Life with William Shawn and The New Yorker by Lillian Ross
The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West by David McCullough

>17 seitherin: I don't believe I read that book, but I read another on the subject of that explosion. It was fascinating.

>17 seitherin: >20 whymaggiemay: In the early 90's, Robert MacNeil (of MacNeil/Lehrer on PBS) wrote a novel Burden of Desire set against the historical backdrop of that explosion. It was the first I'd ever heard about it. Although the book is fiction, MacNeil the journalist (who is Canadian, by the way) seemed to do a thorough job of covering the disaster.

Waiting for me when I woke up this morning:

Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky
A Brightness Long Ago by Guy Gavriel Kay

Free until 5/17 from Tor.com: Autonomous by Annalee Newitz

Received a review copy of Velocity Weapon by Megan E. O'Keefe.

Just received Secrets Of A Successful Organizer by Alexandra Bradbury as a gift/homework from my union president.

Downloaded Prairie Fires: The American Dream of Laura Ingalls Wilder

My Early Reviewer, The Wisdom of Wonder Woman by Signe Bergstrom, came in the mail this week.

Two books, both recommended by LT friends.

My Sister The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite..from Local Library

Amongst Women by John McGahern thru mail.

Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
Tr. by Constance Garnett

Funny Money; a mystery featuring Tony Valentine
by James Swain

>29 rolandperkins: Nice to be reminded of Fathers and Sons -- brings back good memories. If you ever want to read a biography of Turgenev, I don't think you can do better than V. S. Pritchett's The Gentle Barbarian.

#28 hi Aussieh- my sister the serial killer is fabulous!!

I rewarded myself with Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters by Eric Powell after finishing a monstrous amount of work this week.

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

Amsterdam by Ian McEwan

Condor and Hummingbird by Charlotte Mendez

Waiting for me on my reader this morning:

Limited Wish by Mark Lawrence
Lent by Jo Walton

Carols and Chaos – Cindy Anstey
3***

Adapted from the book jacket: England, 1817. The chaos of the Yuletide season is in full force at the country estate of Shackleford Park, but lady’s maid Kate Darby barely has time to notice. Between her household duties, caring for her demanding mother, and saving up money to someday own a dress shop, her hands are full. Matt Harlow is also busy. He’s performing double duty, acting as valet for both of the Steeple brothers, who are holiday guests at the estate. Falling in love would be a disaster for either of them. But that is the least of their problems as they get caught up in an intrigue that begins with a missing footman.

My reactions
I picked this up because I was trolling the library’s shelves looking for a particular cover image. It sounded like a quick, fun read and that’s exactly what it was.

The romance plus cozy mystery makes for some interesting twists and turns in the plot, as well as satisfying tension between the two lead characters. I liked Kate; she’s intelligent, self-reliant, dedicated and persistent. I find that she’s a little too “fluttery” around Matt, but given the genre (YA romance), I’ll cut her some slack. Matt is equally intelligent, disciplined, dedicated and protective.

This is the second book in a series, the first being Suitors and Sabotage. I don’t feel I missed anything by reading out of order. The first book apparently deals with “Upstairs” – the relationship between Kate’s and Matt’s employers; while this one is decidedly “Downstairs.”

I had to stop buying books because I was broke. It's been hard!

Went to the Salvation Army Thrfit Shop, and bought
Mandela: The Authorized Biography by Anthony Sampson
The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

Then later, I went to Value Village as they were having a 50% off books sale, and bought:
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling
A House in the Sky by Amanda Lindhout
Shake Hands with the Devil by Roméo Dallaire
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult

Total cost: $19.25 CAD.

>31 cdyankeefan: - Everybody but me seems to be enjoying My Sister the Serial Killer!! I didn't enjoy it much at all!

>37 ahef1963: Immediately before I saw your comment, I said to my husband that everyone but me seems to love that book, and maybe I just "didn't get it." I'm glad to see I'm not alone, but I am also glad others enjoyed it.

Consciousness and the Novel; connected essays
by David Lodge (from the Hwai'i Public Library ystem)

Fascinating --Includes essays on Dickens, Forster's "Howards End, Waugh,
the two Amises, H. James, Updike, P. Roth (R I P) and
Kierkegaard.

>39 TooBusyReading: - I have that feeling - like fun that everyone else has while I sit bored on the sidelines. It rarely applies to books. Mostly it's other people avidly watching football/rugby/baseball/basketball while I wonder what the allure is!

Ahef I didn't enjoy it either.

My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
Trance by Adam Southward

Pick your Poison by Leann Sweeney

"Deadman's Poker" by James Swain

Cancelling "Deadman's Poker" (44) for now (Intersted in Swain,
but he isn't high on my list.
Taking home Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders, which
I've see a lot about -- in LT, and nothing outside of LT. I realize now
that he's been a non-fction writer, up to this one.
Also The Rook by Daniel O'Mallley --seems to be in the "Fantasy"
category, which I've read in only occasionally.
And also Vermeer; the complete paintings by Norbert Schneider.

<43 hi seitherin. Loved my sister the serial killer- hope you enjoy it!

>46 cdyankeefan: I'm about a third of the way through and I like it. Makes for a really nice change of pace from the other stuff I'm reading.

Aug 9 - Fog by Kathryn Scanlan

Sophie Hannah's "he Monogram Murders:
the New Hercule Poirot Mystery

A followup of AG's voluminous mysteries; and
"dedicated to Agatha Christie".

No Place of Safety by Robert Banard -- an author
that I haven't read for years -- or is it decades?

Just finished a family visit to Maine which included a visit to a new-to-me used bookstore!

For $9 I got
Turtle Moon by Alice Hoffman
The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing (Penguin Ink) by Melissa Bank (I already have this book but not with the special cover!)
Fluke by Christopher Moore
The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt by Caroline Preston
Galápagos by Kurt Vonnegut

>50 PaperbackPirate: Good purchasing, I love Alice Hoffman's writings.

Dream Sequence by Adam Foulds
My Parents: An Introduction / This Does Not Belong to You by Aleksandar Hemon

The Subtle Serpent by Peter Tremayne

Comics will Break your Heart by Faith Erin Hicks

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

The Comfort of Saturdays by Alexander McCall Smith

The Lost Art Of Gratitude by Alexander McCall Smith

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

The Witch Elm by Tana French
The Element of Lavishness: Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and William Maxwell

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction September/October 2018 edited by C. C. Finlay

From Tor.com: The Murders of Molly Southbourne by Tade Thompson

Solus by Peter Bowen

>51 aussieh: Thank you! Me too!

We went on a road trip for our 20th anniversary and got to stop at 2 bookstores on the way.

From Bookworm Haven in Pahrump, Nevada I grabbed:
Cycle of the Werewolf by Stephen King
Eye in the Sky by Philip K. Dick

and

from B Street Books in San Mateo, California I purchased
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.

I also got Quotations of John Muir from the Death Valley Furnace Creek Visitor Center.

Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty

I went to a craft rave at our locally owned bookstore and accidentally picked up
Falling from Horses by Molly Gloss
and
You Can't Spell Truth Without Ruth: An Unauthorized Collection of Witty & Wise Quotes from the Queen of Supreme, Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Mary Zaia.

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