What Books Came Into Your Home Today? - April. 2008

March was a heavy book buying/mooching/trading/borrowing month on LT.

And April will probably be just as rewarding! Don't be an April Fool! Bring home some books, and tell us about them. (Then visit the thread about book related neuroses for some support from like-minded bibliophiles.)

Well since Borders sent me a 40% coupon for any book and I have to use it by tom. I think I will bring at least one book home on April Fool's Day!

I predict I will have a heavy mooching month, other people's inventories allowing. (I don't think I've ever had much more than half a dozen points before the Good Friday Storage-Retrieval Run: it was followed by a Listing Spike and an Easter Weekend Mooching Run, which are both still sputtering on a little. Now I have nearly twenty points burning an e-hole in my e-pocket.)

printing out that borders coupon as we speak! back tomorrow to list my new additions :) happy april fools everyone! (hopefully that coupon isn't an april fools though, that would suck)

I've got an ARC of the next John Connolly.

I left my book at home today, so picked up another for the bus ride home, I'm so hopeless, now have Never Let Me Go I read an a chapter on Amazon and have been looking forward to it. Will alternate with Catch 22

I brought home 100 Suns and Only Forward.

>6 shelby1977: shelby: Never Let Me Go is really making the LT rounds right now! I just finished it; what a great book!

In fact, I liked it so much, I got another of his books from the library yesterday: Remains of the Day. Also brought home Rejection, Romance and Royalties : the Wacky World of a Working Writer by Laura Resnick.

I'll be bringing something home tonight, I'm sure. I also have the 40% off coupon from Borders. I can never resist, even though I know they'll soon be sending me another one.

My extra batch book, Franklin and Lucy by Joseph Persico just arrived via UPS (perfect timing, because all I have read in Handmaid's Tale is the first little chapter, so I can set it aside for awhile). I don't know what happened to my March book, though...

@6 - I read Never Let me go earlier this year and loved it. Very beautifully written.

Today I went to the Borders that is right across the road from my work...it was my first time in the store since starting here last week. I am so impressed with my will power!! Although now that the seal has been broken (so to speak) I'll probably be a frequent visitor.

Anywho...I went into the store to pick up Jim Butcher's newest Dresden book (just released today) Small Favor. Then I slipped in my mantra of chanting 'stay focused, get in, get the book, get out' by wandering too far into the store. So ended up with The Book Thief and Persian Girls as well. There were a few others that tried to follow me home but I was able to lure them back onto the shelf with promises of next time....

I loved The Book Thief, I listened to the audio book. It was wonderful.

Hoping to join the GroupRead - Literature group, I bought Middlemarch - technically yesterday but...

In today from the libraries:

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro - yes, I have decided I must jump on the bandwagon, too

The Earth Shall Weep by James Wilson

Clockers by Richard Price

Arctic Explorations by Elisha Kent Kane

Penmarric by Susan Howatch

Eden's Outcasts by John Matteson - Touchstone for title not working

Shackleton by Roland Huntford

Karluk by William Laird McKinlay

China Men by Maxine Hong Kingston

Before Lewis and Clark by Shirley Christian

Heyday by Kurt Andersen

The Arctic Grail by Pierre Berton

A Life Wild and Perilous by Robert M. Utley

My 40% off coupon from Borders was burning a hole in my purse, so I stopped on my way home. All three books were LT recommendations:

Mallory's Oracle by Carol O'Connell
A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin
Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson (touchstone not working)

I almost brought home two more books, but then remembered my library's used book sale is this Saturday.

I too fell prey to the 40% off coupon and came home with

The Outlandish Companion by Diana Gabaldon,
The Dark Queen by Susan Carroll, and
Fer-de-Lance by Rex Stout (this after having two people recommend the Nero Wolfe books to me).

They gave me another coupon for the weekend as I was leaving...

A very nice man in brown delivered Right Ho, Jeeves right to my door, completely unbidden ;-)

He also had Volumes 1 & 3 from Anne Rice's Sleeping Beauty Trilogy. Amazon was out of 2, so I had to order it from another seller.

ETA: ooh, ooh, Talbin, you're starting Mallory!!!! Let us know how you like it!

I am currently reading InkHeart written by Cornelia Funke. It is a really interesting book because you are reading a book about a book.

Brothers the hidden history of the Kennedy yearsDreaming
War,Blood for oil
Body Surfing Anita Shreve, On Chesil Beach Ian McEwan, from the library

Received Mary Beth Norton's Liberty's Daughters today through BookMooch.

@15 shootstarr - they give me those weekend coupons all the time. its a horrible vicious circle...for how can any book addict in their right mind let a coupon expire?

Daniel Deronda by George Eliot in today from BookMooch.

20>

I know. I just looked at the guy and said something to the effect of "Because another coupon is just what I need."

#15 shootingstarr7 and #20 Irisheyz77

Damn coupons! I'm from Canada and our biggest book chain Chapters has what they call their "irewards" program: basically, you pay $25 per year and you are then entitled to 10% off everything in the store (or 5% if you buy online) at any time during the year. When you pay your annual fee, they give you a coupon booklet. Last week my TBR pile took a dive from the cupboard I keep it in and as I was replacing everything so that the doors would close, the sheer volume of volumes in my possession kinda had me saying "enough already" - plus my friend had just given me 8 more in the afternoon, so I took the last coupon in the booklet and ripped it to shreds...

I'm still feeling guilty...

Kathy

kmbooklover - your chapters sounds like the Barnes and Noble reward program. Its positively evil!

Borders rewards program is free to join and after you spend a certain amount you earn $ dollar off coupons....and then they send you pretty little 40% off coupons and news on various sales and promotions that they are having.

I also gave up trying to get a handle on my TBR pile. One of these days the books are going to rise up and revolt against me....burying me beneath them in outrage for being neglected for so long. so if a lot of time goes by and no one has heard from me....please send help!

So, I made this resolution that I wasn't going to buy any books for a while to get my TBR shelves to a manageable level. Then I saw the group that was reading War & Peace is considering reading Middlemarch next, so of course I needed that. Then, Borders sent me a coupon, so of course Crowning the Kansas City Royals was necessary. Don't ask me how I'm going to justify Conversations with Tom Petty or A Thousand Days. *sigh* My name is Jen, and I'm a book addict.

borders coupon!!

Peter Doig, Middlemarch, The Remains of the day and An artist of the floating world

wee.. off to read now.

Hi Jen. Welcome to the group! I'm Irish, fellow shamless hopeless book addict.

Jen, you are among friends. We all share the sickness! ;o)

>16 citygirl: citygirl - Yep, I saw the thread in the Crime group about Mallory and decided I needed to see what everyone was talking about. Mysteries are my secret escape literature, and I love finding a series that I can start at the beginning!

>27 Irisheyz77:, 28 Being around fellow book addicts only encourages my addiction, I think. I blame LT for at least half of my recent purchases.

>30 Jthierer:, LT TOTALLY encourages addiction. I have put 105 books on my wishlist in the past month - that's just how many are still on it! It doesn't even count the ones I've already bought off of the wishlist, or the books that I bought because I found them at Half Price Books when I went in to get things off of the wishlist.

My parents gave me (book) money for my birthday and the first of my purchases came in today. All of them are from series/authors that I am currently reading:

By Faye Kellerman: The Ritual Bath, Sacred and Profane, Milk and Honey, Day of Atonement, False Prophet, Sanctuary, Justice, Prayers of the Dead, Serpent's Tooth, Jupiter's Bones and Stalker.

By Daniel Silva: The Mark of the Assassin, The Messenger, The Marching Season, The Kill Artist, A Death in Vienna, The Unlikely Spy, Prince of Fire, The Confessor and The English Assassin.

Now if only my Book Closeouts order would come in . . .

Three that are so juicy they even tempt me to cheat on The Book Thief:

Unaccustomed Earth -- Jhumpa Lahiri's new short-story collection

The Best of the Bellevue Literary Review -- anthology of medical stories, essays, and poems from New York University's Dept. of Medicine (LT inspired!)

Then We Came to the End -- Joshua Ferris's Chicago ad-agency novel (I love stories set in workplaces)

Earlier this week from The Book Depository in the UK:
Voices, the third mystery in the series by Arnaldur Indridason
Sorry by Gail Jones (I have her previous two books)
Swiftly by Adam Robert (his latest)

notice they are all one word titles. . .

On the same day from Amazon:
Dark Integers by Greg Egan (for the hubby)
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (a collection of stories centered around one woman, set in Maine, PW gave it a great review)

From the library:
A New England Tale by Catharie Maria Sedgwick

24 - Irisheyz77

I keep track of your thread in the "50 book challenge" - I got your back!!!

:)

Irish, if you die under a pile of books, can I have your library?

I went to another author reading at the Harvard Book Store this evening so now I have a signed first edition of Sea Change Poems by Jorie Graham.

And since I had a few minutes before the reading, I hit the remainder tables and also came home with:

Tete-a-Tete: The Tumultous Lives & Loves of Simone De Beauvoir & Jean-Paul Sartre by Hazel Rowley
Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name by Vendela Vida
Nothing Remains the Same : Rereading and Remembering by Wendy Lasser
Islam : A Short History by Karen Armstrong

Yesterday brought me The Enchanter's Forest by Alys Clare and Too Big to Miss by Sue Ann Jaffarian.

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn was delivered, apparently by owl. I think I got the idea for this off of this very thread. You guys are such bad influences. Also, Enfance by Nathalie Sarraute fell through the mail chute.

From all the way across the pond came a lovely bunch of mooched books:

What is the What by Dave Eggers
The Cleft by Doris Lessing
The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson
The Great Transformation by Karen Armstrong.

And from the library:
Cheating at Canasta by William Trevor

wow. 50% of touchstones.

Yesterday (one of) my book(s) from Marktplaats.nl came in:

Les Contemplations, a collection of poems by Victor Hugo, which I only bought because it has the exquisite "Demain, des l'aube" in it. I'm not much of a poetry lover, but that one is just so beautiful.

I received my first BookMooch book today. How much fun! Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson with illustrations by N.C. Wyeth. It's beautiful. I almost feel guilty.

Used a giftcard to Barnes & Noble yesterday and came out with more than expected:

Emma by Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Stori Telling by Tori Spelling

Now if I can only find time to read them all along with everything else.

Oh some many Borders coupons and so little $$ but I was very bad last 2 days and dam those 40% coupons (by the way Borders was mobbed that last day of the coupon). I got:
Belong to Me By Marisa De Los Santos
A Far Country
The Lying Tongue
Ministry of Special Cases
Ghost At The Table
A Foreign Affair
and last but not least The Last Empress.

Now Borders has the nerve to send me today another 25% coupon--I'm gonna have to use it.

My name is Maureen and I am a bookaholic too!!

Went to the library today and picked up Kafka at the Shore by Murakami Haruki and 1984 by George Orwell. Both looks like very interesting read.

No less than 3 books in the mail for me today through Marktplaats.nl!

One flew over the cuckoo's nest by Ken Kesey
The cider house rules by John Irving
More than human by Theodore Sturgeon

I've really been out of control these past couple of days, but I decided I could see if any of the books on my wish list were for sale on Marktplaats.nl and they were and that makes it so much cheaper than buying them new from Bol.com, so actually I've been really frugal...

...my name is Yvonne and I'm a bookaholic...

Two new exam copies for teaching this summer:

The Right Thing to Do and The Elements of Moral Philosophy; both are James Rachels texts.

The Friends of the Pittsboro Memorial Library are having a book sale. I came home with:

The Quiet American by Graham Greene
We Are Our Mother's Daughters by Cokie Roberts
Naked in Baghdad by Anne Garrels
The Elizabethans and America by A. L. Rowse
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
A Son of the Circus by John Irving
The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman
Under Orders by Dick Francis
Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding
Bridget Jones The Edge of Reason by Helen Fielding
The Nazi Officer's Wife by Edith Hahn Beer
The Murder Room by P. D. James
Shroud for a Nightingale by P. D. James
Death in Holy Orders by P. D. James

Now I will add them to my library. Buying, cataloguing, reading. Oh, yes.

Went to the library in town to get taxes done & while waiting, attacked the discarded book carts. Came home with:Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth Christopher Lloyd, the Adventurous GardenerA Fine Balance Reading in the Dark Waking SamuelBrideshead Revisiteda 1944 editionJohn Irving's memoir The imaginary GirlfriendAllen Lacy The Gardener's eyeGreen thoughts Eleanor Perenyi ( I read this many years ago & looking forward to reading it again) Arcadia Jim Crace.

Initial D #1 came in today from a BookMooch member. Hurrah! Books via mailbox is my favorite way of getting them, I think.

Two tidy little packages from PBS:
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
I have a feeling I'm not going to like this, but I can't resist seeing what the fuss is about. At least I won't have paid money for it if I am right.

Gil's All Fright Diner by A. Lee Martinez
Read about it on an LT-thread and thought it looked like fun.

I had to go to Goodwill last night to donate some items and Half Price Books to pick up a gift card for my mother-in-law's gift (I made her a cute little card with a book on it and gave her some recommendations of things to get with the gift card) and of course I didn't leave either of those places empty-handed...

Goodwill ($8.50 for 6 books!):
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia
Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy (I've read some of Lauren Willig's books recently and wanted to actually read this)
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Thin Place by Kathryn Davis, because one of her other books was recommended to me on LT
Some Goosebumps book by R.L. Stine for my sister

Half Price Books
Stealing Buddha's Dinner by Bich Minh Nguyen
The Mapmaker's Wife by Robert Whitaker

I would normally have bought a lot more at Half Price Books, but I didn't have my wishlist with me and I'm planning to spend a bunch of money at the Friends of the Library sale tonight.

(Also: All touchstones worked except two authors! Amazing!)

#52 jlcardwell I, too, have read some of Lauren Willig's books and bought The Scarlet Pimpernel at the Thrift Shop! Great minds. You'll probably get to it before me, so let me know what you think.

i was passing a local charity shop and the ... had books outside on the windowsill. i spotted A high Meadow by John B. Keane so, naturaly, i had to go in and buy it. while in there i also picked up Any old Iron by Anthony Burgess and Heros and villains by Angela Carter. it's not too bad: 3 books for 4€, but the mount is really starting to take over now--Help

STOCeallaigh -- give in to it. It's easier that way.

I received a slightly worn 1930 first edition copy of The Mountain Wreath by Petar Petrovich Nyegosh which I am going to read for the Reading Globally: Former Yugoslavia choice.

I also received a gift from a friend who works at a bookstore in Stuttgart, a paperback copy of Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk, signed by the author!

A banner book day!

The book fairy dropped by today and left:

Speak, Memory - Nabokov's autobiography. Yum.
Side Effects: A New Orleans Love Story - Patty Friedmann. I didn't realized it would be hardback. Bonus.
The Uses of Enchantment - Heidi Julavits.
The Dutchman - Maan Meyers. I'd never heard of this author (actually a husband and wife team until that author cluster thing whose name I cannot remember grouped it close to Carol O'Connell, one of my faves and the reviews looked pretty good so....

Today, from Amazon:

Wit's End by Karen Joy Fowler
Wild Nights! Stories about the Last Days of Poe, Dickinson, Twain, James and Hemingway by Joyce Carol Oates

A boxed set of little "Toot n Puddle' books (for a gift)
The Quiltmaker's Gift by Jeff Brumbeau (also for a gift).

Wit's End by Karen Fowler was in my mailbox today, apparently I won an early reviewer edition from a website. I'm not complaining, I just don't remember doing it!

A BookMooch copy of The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas arrived today, as did Remembrance of Things Past: Volume III by Marcel Proust.

Local library having their Spring Book Sale.

The Green Mile by Stephen King
The Partner by John Grisham
The Client by John Grisham
The Firm by John Grisham
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Eight Tales of Terrorby Edgar Allan Poe

Can't wait to get started.

I went back this afternoon to the library's spring book sale and got:

Dune by Frank Herbert
Three by Tey by Josephine Tey
Civilisation by Kenneth Clark
Olivia Joules and The Overactive Imagination by Helen Fielding
Angels & Insects by A. S. Byatt
A Fine and Private Place The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
The New Oxford Book of Seventeenth Century Verse Edited by Alastair Fowler
The Heart of a Goof by P.G Wodehouse
Carry On, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
The Keep by Jennifer Egan
The Dechronization of Sam Magruder by George Gaylord Simpson
Asta's Book by Barbara Vine
Anna's Book by Barbara Vine
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
A Burnt-Out Case by Graham Greene
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
AND two trashy romances

All for $16.

Chalk me up for another library booksale (I guess it is the season). I did great, although I was disappointed by the lack of 'classics'. I was hoping for some Austen, Bronte, Dumas, etc. Nothing but some Dickens. I did get the following though (for $13):
*Mysteries of the Ancient World - a National Geographics 1979 publication
*Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories by Vladimir Nabokov
*Queen of the South by Arturo Perez Reverte
*Even the Stars Look Lonesome by Maya Angelou (really? no touchstone?)
*One Day of Life by Manlio Argueta
*The Traitor of St. Giles by Michael Jecks
*The Emperor's Children' by Claire Messud
*The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
*Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquirel
and, from my wishlist and LT recommendations
*The Borgia Bride by Jeanne Kalogridis
*Infidel Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Sounds like an interesting haul, jlcardwell. Oooh, hours and hours of page feasting.

I should not have spent money today, but I did it to myself. Just had to stop by Half Price Books. I only spent $20, though. I've read some of these, but I hadn't owned them. I left happy!

The Autobiography of Santa Claus by Jeff Guinn
The Great Santa Search by Jeff Guinn
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Emma by Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Lady Susan by Jane Austen
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Bleak House by Charles Dickens

The Story Girl by L.M. Montgomery was sent to me by a fellow BookMoocher.

It must be the day for library book sales. I went to my first this morning (I know, embarrassing for someone who says they love books), and was positively amazed at the number of people waiting to get in and how quickly people ran to grab books seemingly at random. I chose carefully, though, and came home with books I'll actually read. And, LT mobile (on my Palm) was incredibly handy for weeding out a few books I had already read. Anyway, for $4 I came home with the following:

Snow by Orhan Pamuk
A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin
Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton
The Winner by David Baldacci
Middle Age: A Romance by Joyce Carol Oates
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot
Anais Nin Reader edited by Philip K. Jason

Our library had a book sale, as well! But I didn't know about it, UGH. I stopped in to pick up some books I'd requested and I had NO CASH and NO TIME so I had to exercise incredible restraint. Hopefully they will have another one soon.

Meanwhile, on loan from the library I have Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and First, Break all the Rules.

Finally! Got in the books I ordered from BookCloseouts.com for my birthday: The Children's Blizzard by David Laskin, Every Book Its Reader by Nicholas Basbanes (whose books I love!), What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew by Daniel Pool, Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin, Pillar of Fire and At Canaan's Edge both by Taylor Branch, Orbit by John J. Nance, Churchill and America by Martin Gilbert, and The Hemingway Book Club of Kosovo by Paula Huntley. Also, because I love old time radio so much, I got a set on The History of Radio for $2.99 - 8 cassettes of old time radio thrillers.

I finally purchased my own copy of The Time Traveler's Wife and Middlesex. I also got Interpreter of Maladies. There were several others I *wanted* to bring home... new-ish book by Kate Mosse called Sepulchre...

>68 lauralkeet: lindsacl - I think you'll love Kingsolver's book - especially now that it's gardening season! (although, I felt so inferior with my relatively meager harvests). It's inspiring at any rate.

Got a call that I won the books I bid on yesterday at the Library sale's auction:
The book set of Faulker - Light in August, The Sound and the Fury, and As I Lay Dying - as well as a beautiful edition of Complete Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm

For me my new books this month have been
Voice of The Gods - reading at the moment
K-Pax: The Trilogy - the film sparked my interest.
and The Innocent Mage

Today was dollar store day. Sometimes I find stuff there and sometimes I come up dry. Today netted these hardcovers for one dollar each:

The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard with a National Book Award Winner sticker on the front.
When Hollywood Had a King by Connie Bruck. I enjoyed her The Predator's Ball book.
Pointing From the Grave by Samantha Weinberg which looks like a scientific true crime book.
And a couple of others that I probably won't read but use for trading material.

VisibleGhost, The Great Fire may not be Hazzard's greatest novel (that would be The Transit of Venus), but it's still beautifully written and very entertaining.

I received the following in the mail from an online seller:

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, Vol. 13 edited by Stephen Jones

I received Stone Creek by Victoria Lustbader, for a forthcoming book review. The book's scheduled for publication June 1.

Eleanor vs. Ike by Robin Gerber was delivered to my office over the weekend, and The Venetian Mask by Rosalind Laker came at about 10 am today.

The mail brought me
The Journey to Pain Relief by Phyllis Berger to review

No One Heard Her Scream by Jordan Dane ARC from Harper Collins

Raising Atlantis by Thomas Greanias

The Eight by Katherine Neville ( touchstone wrong)

Foucault's Penduum by Umberto Eco

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

I started Atlantis Rising... pretty good fluffy-ish read

I just got my ER copy of The Venetian Mask.

Got Fen Country by Edmund Crispin in the mail.

From BookMooch:

The Art of Detection by Laurie R. King
Snow Flower and the secret Fan, by Lisa See

I got my best friend Beowulf: An Illustrated Edition (translated by Seamus Heaney) for his birthday, and it looked so wonderful that I had to get myself one too! (I'm embarrassed to say that I've never read Beowulf, but I'm excited about reading it.)

I'm embarrassed too, so that's why I put Beowulf on my 888 challenge for the year. I was quite excited to learn that I actually already had it - Harvard Classics #49 Epic and Saga. Not that I really know anything about it, but it is a translation by Francis B. Gummere.

I bet you get to it before I do!

Five lovely Viragos:

Red Pottage by Mary Cholmondeley
The World My Wilderness by Rose Macaulay
Blaming by Elizabeth Taylor
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
The Magic Toyshop by Elizabeth Taylor

And The Reluctant Queen by Jean Plaidy

karenmarie: It's nice to know that I'm not the only one! :)

@36 teelgee - if I die when my books topple on me then you can have all the ones that won't fit into my casket. ;-)

Today I received The Venetian Mask in the mail. Its the best sort of book...free. =)

scaifea, I think the Heaney translation is the best so far. Enjoy!

Today brought me --

The Flanders Panel, The Club Dumas, and The Seville Communion, all by Arturo Perez-Reverte, and The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.

>87 Irisheyz77: -- just use a book shelf for a casket.

@90 - i figure that my family can cremate me and spread my ashes in the coffin....that should leave plenty of room for all my favorites....

4 library books came home today:

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson

Two books of Pablo Neruda poetry: Ode to Common Things and Art of Birds.

The Long Sigh the Wind Makes, poems by William Stafford

It being National Poetry Month....

I've just received a copy of Philip Pullman's new His Dark Materials book, Once Upon A Time in the North.

Remembrance of Things Past: Volume III, by Marcel Proust

My advanced reader's edition of Jordan Dane's No One Heard Her Scream arrived from Harper Collins today. :D

I received Make Loneliness by J.Reuben Appelman in the mail yesterday. He was a former college professor. I think it's his first book of poetry every released. I'll probably have it read in a day.

Ah, the Marktplaats.nl bird left a wonderful present on my doorstep (actually, he put it in the mailbox, how clever is that?!):

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

My friend was raving about it and although the titel is of course very familiar, I've never read it. When I thought about why not, I found out because I hate maths and even though the book very probably isn't about maths, the titel was enough to put me off!

UPS just dropped off Good Things by Jane Grigson from Amazon and I picked up Murder in the Dark by Kerry Greenwood at the library

Today ((Cormac McCarthy's)) ('The road' ) fell through my letterbox. Started reading it and had to put it down before I filled my head with enough nightmares to fuel a week of lost sleep. However, I have to find out what happens, so I'll gird my loins and carry on, but it feels like strong medicine. Why am I reading it? I guess because it's referred to in so many 'green issue' posts on the internet and also in the media.

But oh my word, it is soooo depressing.

debigliori, hang in there -- not that it gets any less depressing, but it's really a brilliant book.

fyi: to get the book and author links (touchstones) to work, use the squarish brackets instead of the parentheses. Find them just to the right of the P key.

In tonight from the libraries:

Sleeping with Fear by Kay Hooper

Legacies by F. Paul Wilson

Jump and Other Stories by Nadine Gordimer

Letters of a Woman Homesteader by Elinore Pruitt Stewart

Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope

Miracles: A Preliminary Study by C.S. Lewis

A Little Learning by Evelyn Waugh

Overhead in a Balloon by Mavis Gallant

Iron and Silk by Mark Salzman

The Heaven Tree Trilogy by Edith Pargeter

A signed, first edition of Isabel Allende's new book The Sum of Our Days

Aaaahhhhh - sisaruus, to die for!!!! I just heard her interviewed this morning on Democracy Now.

'Scuse me, I have to wipe the drool off my keyboard now.

My first book purchase of April: The End of the Alphabet, by CS Richardson. I bought at the grocery store, of all places, in a 40% off bin. There were actually about half a dozen books that I'd call literary fiction, but I'd read most of them. I pulled as many of them out from under books as I could and arranged them on top of the self-help books. Shesh, I should work at a book store.

Celebration: I BOUGHT A BOOK YESTERDAY!!!! :-D I've only bought one other this whole year, and that was with a gift voucher (but if you saw my library list on the other hand...)

Bought book = The remains of the day. I'm starting in reverse from everyone else, this is my first Ishiguro and it's started off excellently :)

Library books borrowed yesterday = A morbid taste for bones (my first Ellis Peters) and Interesting Times which I've since discovered I've read before, didn't think I had.

Chocolate- I just finished Remains of the Day and thought it was brilliant. Congrats on picking a winner as your second book o' the year! Enjoy!

In from the library:
An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sachs
and
Woman, an Intimate Geography by Natalie Angier. Of course, I still have 19 other books from the library. Better get off the net and start reading.

teelgee (#103),
Isabel Allende did a reading last night at Harvard Square. I saw her last year in Hartford (sponsored by the YWCA). The two talks were very different (at the YW, quite serious; last night, quite amusing) yet she was wonderful each time. I am looking forward to the next opportunity.

Yesterday I received the manga Loveless Volume 1 in the mail.

I received four Persephone books yesterday:

The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Tea with Mr. Rochester by Frances Towers
Marjory Fleming by Oriel Malet
Brook Evans by Susan Glaspell

Just checked out of the library today

Niccolo Rising and How to Cook a Tart

teelgee - thanks for the tip about brackets. So. last night I finished The Road by Cormac McCarthy and had a really hideous nightmare a few hours later. Mind you, that's hardly his fault, but right now, more nightmares I do not need. I tried my very best, but I could not connect with anything redemptive about this book - for sure the parent/child love was there, but it was somewhat swamped by the endless burnt landscape, the drifting clouds of ash ( what on earth happened?) and those unutterably gruesome images ( two of) that frankly, I wish I could wash out of my head. But hey, I read it and now I'm going to start overlaying the horror with some Amy Tan, Saving Fish From Drowning and to follow an A.L. Kennedy that I cannot remember the name of.

Thankyou for connecting with me.

A BookMooch book arrived today, You Can't Go Home Again, by Thomas Wolfe

I bought two books from the charity shop, the Notting Hill Housing Trust today: Help Yourself with the Kumars from the popular and hilarious BBC TV series, and Falling Cloudberries by Tessa Kiros, for £5 each.

Today I received Brave New World in the beautiful Easton Press format. I love these and search regularly for them on eBay. I am very cheap though so I do not have many.

I also got a book from BookMooch, Girl with a Pearl Earring. The other two books by Tracy Chevalier have been of "mixed" quality, but not so much so that I'm willing to blanket-dismiss the rest of her work.

I adored Girl with a Pearl Earring, but I have been fascinated with Vermeer's rooms for years, and it gave me a peak at his world, even though it's fictional. If you don't have a book of Vermeer's art, take one out of the library to look at while you read. That's one novel that really needs illustrations (you can get Vermeer pics on the internet too, of course)

Today I bought a really nice edition of Northanger Abbey, which will replace a perfectly adequate Dover edition. I also got Pierre Berton's The Arctic Grail, which I've picked up every time I've gone to the bookstore. Today it finally got to come home with me.

i picked up two books -- for 15€ -- while hanging around heuston station in Dublin.
Two Caravans by Marina lewycka &
The Wormdigger's daughter by John Farrell

From another danged HPB coupon:
Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
March by Geraldine Brooks
Hotel Du Lac by Anita Brookner
The Seduction of Water by Carol Goodman
Local Girls by Alice Hoffman

From PBS:
The Road by Cormac McCarthy

A signed copy of Have You Found Her: A Memoir by Janice Erlbaum.

I received a PBS swap, The Golden Spur by Dawn Powell, an addition to my Virago collection.

The Willoughby's by Lois Lowry...the arc came home with me today.

>117 Nickelini:
I know about buying a book to replace another, perfectly good copy of the same one. I listed a copy of Emma on BookMooch, pending purchasing another copy that isn't so obviously secondhand -- and which in all likelihood still wouldn't hold a metaphorical candle to the copy of Northanger Abbey you've described elsewhere.

123-
Yes, I hear you. Unfortunately in this case I had a bit of a problem justifying the new Northanger Abbey, as the one it's replacing is new and unread. But, in my defense of the new purchase, the old one was really cheap. There. I've justified it. And furthermore, now that I think of it, I should buy the whole set, because all my Jane Austen books should match.

now that I think of it, I should buy the whole set, because all my Jane Austen books should match.

Nickelini, get thee to the Book-related Neuroses Thread with that one!

(although I sheepishly admit to feeling the same way about my collection of mooched Austens ...)

In today from the libraries:

The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin

The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman

The Snow Garden by Christopher Rice

Yesterday I finished A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin and didn't have book two ready to go, so even though I was sick I headed to Borders and bought A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords. I already found A Feast for Crows at a library sale, so now I don't need to worry about being caught unprepared for the next book in the series!

>127 Talbin: Addictive as all get out, aren't they? I'm anxious as heck to get my hands on book number five, which should be hitting stores shortly :D :D

>128 philosojerk: Yes, they are! Just looked at Amazon, though, and #5 isn't due to be out until September 30th! I'm going to have to slow down . . . .

Aye, the waiting sucks. Worst part of reading a series that isn't finished and out in its entirety already...

I'm amazed, but the books I ordered from Amazon just this Monday arrived today - and I used the free super-saver shipping and everything! I got:

Liberty Before Liberalism by Quentin Skinner
All Tomorrow's Parties by William Gibson
Worlds of Exile and Illusion by Ursula K. LeGuin (and this one is actually three novels printed together: Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile, and City of Illusions.)

Weeeeeeeee :D

Via BookMooch: The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo.

This is one I got as a gift for my brother:

More Spit than Polish at Tolman Pond: An unlikely summer resort in the wilds of Nelson, New Hampshire, another "little town that Time forgot" by F. B. Tolman.

I got a really nice illustrated edition of Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens in the mail today. An early present from my future in-laws for my birthday on Monday.

I went to the reciprocal library at my parent's condo, and got

A Christmas Carol and Other Stories- a lovely hardcover with printed end papers. Will look very nice on shelf
Dropped Threads
Queen Victoria: Her Life and Times -- a lovely old book that appears to be from the early 20th or late 19th century
The History of Tom Jones in a nice morocco--it will look super on the book shelf beside the two other old books.

In return, I left some of my Mom's old Danielle Steels and Phyllis Whitney's.

It must be the day for Charles Dickens! In the mail today from FrugalReader.com I received The Old Curiosity Shop.

#134: Definitely sounds like you got the better part of the bargain!

I did indeed! But you know the saying: "one man's trash is another man's treasure". Someone is going to wander in there and be just thrilled to find that Danielle Steel novel. :-)

A weekend visit to the capital netted a three-volume set of Florida's Past by Gene Burnett

While on a visit to our new Goodwill Bookstore looking into info for the LT Local page I found:
Crusade of Tears by C.D. Baker
Scott Foresman Handbook for Writers at Florida State University by Hairston
A signed first edition of The Dolphins of Pern by Anne McCaffrey
What an amazing place! Based in a not too appealing building, I was surprised to find an open and wheelchair friendly interior with books attractively displayed alphabetically by category. There was even a children’s room with books separated by age. I need to return for pictures since I want to do an article on my blog.

Three coupons led me to Borders where I found:
The Complete Illustrated Guide to Castles, Palaces & Stately Houses of Britain by Charles Phillip
American Family Paper Dolls from the Pilgrim Period to the Civil War by Tom Tierney
Buckingham Palace Gardens by Anne Perry
The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs
Utopia by Thomas More
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

I'll soon need new bookcases.

Today I got Queen Lucia, which is really cool, because it was suggested to me by a LTer. And because of where the suggestion came from, it's going straight to my shortlist TBR pile, bypassing the other 40+ books in the regular TBR pile.

I got Free Food For Millionaires, Things I Want My Daughters to Know, The Law of Similars, and last but not least Without a Map. I hope I get some major reading time this weekend!!

In today from the libraries:

The Headmistress by Angela Thirkell - I have read a lot of good things about Thirkell's books here on LT, so I am looking forward to reading this one

The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud

Light Before Day by Christopher Rice

What is the What by Dave Eggers

Another book arrived in the mail today from FrugalReader.com. The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings by Oscar Wilde!!!

alcottacre - only four from the library?? have they run out of books?

I finished a book that I think about anyone who enjoys reading would like to read. The Brimfield Rush this was such a funny, well written, non fiction book. Another very good book is Slightly Chipped anyone who collects books would find this interesting on how this couple went about collecting books. Both books are fast, easy reads.

I must admit, since last fall when I joined LT my book buying has greatly increased. There have been way too many interesting book suggestions on here for me to pass up!

Oh me too, investory, me too.

All the books that came home today and yesterday were freebies though:

Mooched from friends:
The Gathering by Anne Enright
Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris

and from the library:
In the Wake by Per Petterson (author of the brilliant Out Stealing Horses).
A Plea for Eros by Siri Hustvedt
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
Fifth Business by Robertson Davies

A pretty nice haul, all in all.

#143: Only 4 from the library today. I currently have 60 checked out.

To quote Ms. Spears in her better years: "Oops, I did it again".....

Went shopping yesterday and saved the great bookstore for last. Came home with the following (all thanks to LT...):

The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

But still, I put about 6 books back that I also had in my hands, so actually I've been very good! ^^

I exchanged my book tokens for Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche...

The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin - 1940s British mystery.

Damn library sales.... I bought 23 books from the library (only cost $6.75, though.) That's too many titles for me to list (at least I don't feel like it anyway.) BUT I did get one book from my wishlist, How Green Was My Valley, and I did a little "I found a treasure" dance (Nobody saw me...) And I picked up about four or five Erich Maria Remarque books; I had only heard of All Quiet on the Western Front. I was surprised there were so many.

Besides the book sale, I borrowed The Invention of Hugo Cabret from the library. I didn't know it was an illustrated novel, so that'll be interesting. THAT'S another book off my wishlist.

Also, I got two books in the mail from BookMooch: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and Plum Lucky. It'll be my first Janet Evanovich book.

Now I need a new bookcase.

I got ten books in two days this month.

Never Lie to a Lady
For the Sake of Their Baby
How to Marry a Ghost
The Wedding Knight
Haunted by James Herbert

Those five I got from my local library- they were having a book sale.

A Sinful Alliance
No Place For a Lady by Louise Allen
A Letter of Mary
Locked Rooms
Merlin by Stephen R. Lawhead

I was feeling really depressed so I went for a walk in downtown Chicago, entered Barnes & Noble and found my all time favorite book Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez which I have read 3 times but I will read it again, and I also bought his Collected Stories. I was on my way back home happy when I eneterd a goodwill which had a 50% off everything and I bought The birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant; The Weight of Water by Anita Shreve; The Tenth Circle and Salem Falls both by Jodi Picoult for only $2. Neddless to say I went home estatic! I love books! I am totally hooked like everyone else here! My name is Angie and I am a bookaholic!

Another birthday book last night! Anna Karenina by Tolstoy

Borders Bargain Bin:
Brick Lane
Lies My Teacher Told Me
Queen of Shadows: A Novel of Isabella, Wife of King Edward II

I stole Gone with the Wind from a friend. Well, not really stole, as borrowed and will maybe, eventually, pay her for it.

Also, bought:
the Cool girl's guide to knitting
The Cool Girl's guide to Crochet

Yesterday from the library: Foreskin's Lament

And from the Friends of the Library for book club in June: The Grapes of Wrath, a lovely old hard back for $2.

#156 whymaggiemay I just read Foreskin's Lament I liked it, but was sort of saddened to think this was someones real life.

I should have known better than to post early in the day. Another book for my birthday. It's a little young for me, but it looks really interesting all the same! The Alchemyst: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel by Michael Scott.

Actually I got these yesterday, but close enough. Used from Amazon came a like-new hardback of Wizard of the Crow on recommendation from LTers. Last night I picked up Run with the Hunted from the clearance rack at Borders. I'd been eyeing this one for a while and starting browsing through it while waiting for someone. From the little I've read so far, I suspect he was mainly a very crazy man with moments of brilliance. But that's just my first impression.

I rarely buy books, and so haven't posted on here before, but I went on a mini-trip to Providence this last weekend and found a basically new copy of The Invention of Hugo Cabret for $11.50! Score!

I also weakened and ordered a few books from Amazon- an on-sale copy of The God Delusion, which I'm currently reading but the library wants its copy back, Don't Know Much About History- the US one (I use it when I tutor US history- a fun read if you're into the subject), and The Invisibles, Volume 1, a graphic novel that keeps getting recommended. They won't technically enter my house for another 5-9 days, but soon they shall be mine!

#160 Kplatypus

I just finished The Invention of Hugo Cabret, and I loved it. It has beautifully captivating illustrations and a story that is fantastic and heart-warming. I really hope you love it as much as I did... more, if possible... :-D

In today from ABEBooks: Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell and Warmly Inscribed by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone.

I got Stardust by Neil Gaiman in the mail today from PaperBackSwap.

From Bookmooch, a recommendation from LT, The Straight and Narrow Path by Honor Tracy.

Did some power shopping over my lunch break at a nearby thrift store and $10.60 bought me:

Dog Stories by James Herriot
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
Walden and Other Writings by Henry David Thoreau
Tartuffe and Other Plays by Jean-Baptiste Moliere
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
Standing in the Rainbow by Fannie Flagg
Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson

OOOooooh!!! #165 sferrando:

I love love love Something Wicked This Way Comes! I've read it twice, and I thought Tartuffe was one of the funniest satires I've read... it's a tie between Tartuffe and Candide (don't know why the Touchstone don't work...) by Voltaire.

#166 ~ I think I read Candide as a teenager, but can't for the life of me remember it. Yet another book to add to my TBR pile...there's gonna be an avalanche soon! :-)

Hello everyone.
I just just just got "The boy in striped pajamas". I can't wait to get started.
I'm so bored with "The Zodiac". I'm thinking about going straigh to the final chapter.

On Saturday I visited a used book store that I had seen and heard about many times but had never visited.
I went in hoping for one, at the very least, battered W. Somerset Maugham book.
I walked in and went right to a stack of beautiful hard-bound books and I blinked a few times in case my eyes were deceiving me. There were FIVE Maugham books in the set. The condition was pretty close to perfect with just enough wear to make them interesting.

I dared to ask how much the whole set would be.
The employee asked me to give her a few minutes to look it up. I went on through the store admiring and maybe drooling a little.
She found me a few minutes later and said, "Is $17 ok?"
"For the set?" I asked, not believing.
Yes...it was $17 for the set!
I quickly grabbed them up, marveling at my lucky find!

@170 ~ DeAnnaW: What a great find!

I picked up Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides for 50p in a local Hospice shop - in Middlesex!!

#159 emaestra - I hope that you enjoy Wizard of the Crow. It may look very long but as I recall, I couldn't put it down.

I am currently in Winnipeg and there's a new McNally Robinson near the house. I don't need any books, but...they had a very good bargain book section so I got The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay, which seems to be well-liked here on LT.

#123 - I know about buying a book to replace another, perfectly good copy of the same one. I listed a copy of Emma on BookMooch, pending purchasing another copy that isn't so obviously secondhand -- and which in all likelihood still wouldn't hold a metaphorical candle to the copy of Northanger Abbey you've described elsewhere.

--------------

I was convinced by several members here (thanks, guys!) that I really needed the whole set of these lovely Jane Austen novels, so I went and bought the other 5 today.

Also came home with a copy of The Girls, by Lori Lansens, which has been on my TBR list since it came out.

#165 & 166 - I love Something Wicked This Way Comes too. It's one of the books that just pops into my head from time to time.

---------

I got The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz from PBS today.

As if my lunchtime trip to the thrift store wasn't enough...when I got home I found the following awaiting me:

From PBS ~
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
Emily's Quest by L.M. Montgomery

From TitleTrader ~
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Flappers and Philosophers by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I also must confess I stopped by ANOTHER thrift store on my way home from work and have a couple sacks o' books in the back seat of my car that I scored! I'm afraid I may have to sneak those into the house, though, so I can't list them right now...I feel so delightfully naughty! ;-)

#162 alcottacre, let me know what you think of Warmly Inscribed. Have you read any of their other books? I really liked Slightly Chipped. Reading their books make you want to search everywhere for books:)

#174 citygirl - My husband just came back from a business trip in Calgary (we live in the US) and he bought the kids and I books from the McNally Robinson bookstore there. I guess the rumor is the one in Calgary is to close in August.

I went to a Lifeline second-hand bookshop on the weekend and walked away with:

Testament of Youth Vera Brittain
The Warden Anthony Trollope
Every Living Thing James Herriot.

For $3 the lot! :-D

OK, I was able to sneak the books into the house that I got at the OTHER thrift store today. They are:

The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Harlot's Ghost by Norman Mailer
A Closed Eye by Anita Brookner
Almost French by Sarah Turnbull
A Can of Peas by Traci DePree
My Nine Lives by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Space by James A. Michener
The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
Forgetfulness by Ward Just
Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns
A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

Until next time...

sferrando, perhaps you need to take a little trip over to the Book-related neuroses thread. ;o)

#178: I understand what you mean completely. I have not read Slightly Chipped, but I have read Used and Rare, which I enjoyed thoroughly and made me wish I were a millionaire and could afford to buy as many books as I wanted . . .sigh.

@ 182 ~ teelgee...thanks for the tip. I'm on my way!

Sometimes when I'm feeling really down, or I'm having a bad day, I let myself go to HPB and book-shop to my heart's content.

Other times, when I'm in a really good mood, it seems to me that good moods and books go really well together, so I'll let myself go to HPB and book-shop to my heart's content.

Either way, I spend way too much time at HPB, but today was a case of the latter ;) I got:

Tau Zero by Poul Anderson
Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained by Peter Hamilton
Earth Abides by George R. Stewart
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

eta: And I just noticed that this purchase took my total number of books to over 600 :D

In from the libraries today:

Fifth Business by Robertson Davies

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta

American Bloomsbury by Susan Cheever

Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel

The Story of the Stone by Barry Hughart

Did some used bookstore shopping today and came home with:

The Heat of the Day, Elizabeth Bowen
Possessing the Secret of Joy, Alice Walker
The Life of Insects, Victor Pelevin
and a really nice set of E. M. Forster novels. They're only paperbacks, but in mint condition and have lovely covers and spines. The titles are:
Where Angels Fear to Tread
Maurice
Howard's End
A Room with a View (which I already own, but this one was too pretty to leave behind.

Just finished The Last Colony by John Scalzi and pre-ordered Zoe's Tale the fourth book in his old man's war series.

Also got during the past month;

THE VERSE BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD the Story of the Burma Shave Signs by JR., FRANK ROWSOME

Steps of the Sun by Walter Tevis

Mister Roberts by Heggen Thomas

On the weekend I got Remember Me? by Sophie Kinsella which I read about 2/3 of in one day. I have about 20 pgs left. It's an easy, light read.

I got The Piano Tuner in the mail today from BookMooch. It sounds like a good book, and the reviews favor it.

From HamiltonBooks.com:

Pride: The Seven Deadly Sins by Michael Eric Dyson
Women and Art: Contested Territory by Judy Chicago and E. Lucie-Smith
Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her by Melanie Rehak
The London Scene by Virginia Woolf
Lust in Translation: The Rules of Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee by Pamela Druckerman
A Slice of Life by Bonnie Marranca
and the audiobook version of Jeanette Winterson's Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles

From the library: Four Dark Nights by Bentley Little, Small World by Tabitha King (touchstone wrong), and My Big, Fat, Supernatural Honeymoon edited by P. N. Elrod

#176: I got The Spellman Files on audio from the library and was listening in the car. When I was on about the 2nd disk, I took my 20-year old son to another city for a campus visit. Since the kids always bring their i-Pods, I turned on my story while we were driving. After only about 10 minutes, he took the earbuds out, asked me what was happening in the story and listened intently for the rest of the trip, and all the way home, and (since we weren't quite finished) took the last 2 disks to finish at home. I enjoyed it from the beginning, but wrongly thought he would think it was lame. He asked if there was a sequel!

I hope you enjoy it, too. It's just a fun, silly book, with just enough warm poignant moments to give it some substance. We had fun trying to figure out the mystery before the reveal at the end - I came closer than he did!

Just in from Bol.com:

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller

I'm very excited, because they both came highly recommended on LT and they were both on the top of my wish list! Now just have to find the time to finish my current read and start these... ^^

Did some retail therapy with books today and picked up:

The Miracle Letters of T. Rimberg by Geoff Herbach
The Secret Bride by Diane Haeger
The Secret of Lost Things by Sheridan Hay

Went to another town for a Drs. appt. & discovered a used bookstore. Returned with:
Ladder of Years Ann Tyler
Crow Lake Mary Lawson
Selected poems of Edna St. Vincent Milay
Norton Anthology of American poetry (shorter version)
Reading in the Dark Seamus Deane
The Imaginary girlfriend A memoir by John Irving
Arcadia Jim Crace
Love Susan Fromberg Schaeffer

Since April 1...

Bookhunter by Jason Shiga
The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie (my early reviewer copy)
Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig (mooched)
Once upon a Time in the North by Philip Pullman
A History of Histories by John Burrow
Better Basics for the Home by Annie Berthold-Bond (my wife's, really)
Life Work by Donald Hall
Elizabeth's Spymaster by Robert Hutchinson
Jonathan Swift by Victoria Glendinning
Under Western Eyes by Joseph Conrad
Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby
Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism by Susan Jacoby
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (Everyman)
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster (Everyman)
Nine Horses by Billy Collins
Select Stories of V.S. Pritchett by, well, V.S. Pritchett
The (Diblos) Notebook by James Merrill
Area of Darkness by V.S. Naipaul

And that should be about it for this month...unless I get the urge to go bookshopping in the next day or two...or more bookmooches show up...which doesn't seem that likely.

Not many books, but a good two/three:

Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

and oh yeah: Dune by F. Herbert, earlier this month.

My my, Lord of the Rings is a thick one. It contains the entire trilogy and is even thicker than Dune, which itself is a reasonable read. I love thick books but their quite cumbersome to handle in bed sometimes.

(Touchtones wouldn't work for Dune and LOTR but it's the trilogy of both.)

In from the libraries today:

The Soul Thief by Charles Baxter

Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron

My Faraway Home by Mary McKay Maynard

Here There Be Dragons by Jane Yolen

I usually only pick up one at a time from work. Today I got this one in from Ingram:

Now You're One of Us by Asa Nonami. Good so far, I read about 30 pages of it on my break.

I came home today to be surprised by Die Leiden des jungen Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, send here by my Austrian friend!

I got a mooched book in the mail today. Molly Moon's Incredible Book of Hypnotism by Georgia Byng. I was surprised at how long it is. I got it for my 9 year old to replace the Junie B. books, as we've read every book in the series. I'm not sure Molly Moon's gonna fly with her. Right now we're on our second book of Lucy Rose.

My books finally arrived from Amazon:
*Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
*Justinian's Flea by William Rosen (not sure why I ordered 2 plague books)
*A Year Without Made in China by Sara Bongiorni for book club next Friday

And from an LTer:
Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah

A Year Without Made in China is going either to the very top or 2nd place in my TBR pile, because I'm expecting two or three other books to come in for review soon and this one needs to get read before the 25th.

Do audio books count? If so, I just picked up Suite Francaise on CD from the library.

I just picked up 3 more from the libraries:

Blaze by Richard Bachman

An Incomplete Revenge by Jacqueline Winspear

The Writings of George Eliot, Volume 2 by George Eliot

Don't know why the Touchstone is not working for the Winspear book. Too new maybe?

I received Breaking Her Fall by Stephen Goodwin which I won through a blog contest.

And from BookMooch:
Briar Rose by Jane Yolen - read this years ago and want to re-read it.
Big Boned by Meg Cabot - for a friend

This in from TitleTrader: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Sent with great speed by a Bookmoocher, a like-new copy of Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer.

edit: shifty eyes: hopes no one saw the phrase "rapid speed": ack, I tattled on myself

Forgot to post these books that I received via TitleTrader a couple days ago:

The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
the Dealth of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy

My March Early Reviewers book came today: Weaving a Way Home : a Personal Journey Exploring Place and Story by Leslie Van Gelder. It is not an ARC condition book though - it's the real deal, harcover, doesn't say "not for resale."

Wandered back into McNally Robinson and wandered out with Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett. Wanted to see what all the fuss is about.

Two books to review from ReaderViews. Historical Genesis: From Adam to Abraham by Richard James Fischer, which I believe was published last month and The Last Queen: A Novel by C.W. Gortner about Juana La Loca.

Took advantage of being in a part of town with two excellent used bookstores and bought:

At Home at the End of the World, by Michael Cunningham
The Swimming Pool Library, by Alan Hollinghurst
The Voyage Out, by Virginia Woolf
Silk, by Alessandro Baricco (with a barfy Kiera Knightly movie tie-in cover)
Midwich Cuckoos, by John Wyndham
Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy
Bachelor Brothers' Bed & Breakfast, by Bill Richardson
History of Danish Dreams, by Peter Hoeg, and
Consumption, by Kevin Patterson

Under Orders by Dick Francis
Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty
Calamity Town by Ellery Queen

The joys of the Thrift Shop!

The Rose Bride by Nancy Holder

These came in the mail today from several different book trading sites:

The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg
A Redbird Christmas by Fannie Flagg
The Jewel of Seven Stars by Bram Stoker

An LT trade brought me Sitting Practice by Caroline Adderson.

A birthday coupon took me to Borders today where I bought Time Bandit by the brothers Hilstrand--because I used to fish in New England--City of the Century by Donald Miller, Sudden Sea by R. A. Scotti, and Running for the Hills by Horatio Clare.

Then to the library to get the Bad Book and The Cute Book by Aranzi Aronzo and Contemporary Celtic Motifs by Alex Sherman.

Two book shop trips in 3 days, to add to the mountain. But the first had 2 books for $22 (NZ - about $27 US) so I bought the Emperor's Children and the Right Attitude to Rain. I've only read the first of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, so hope I like the Scottish series when I get to it.

Today I bought Small Wars Permitting by Christina Lamb and Rough Crossings by Simon Schama. Both look great!

I went to Asda and to my surprise they had a shelf with books for a pound... so I got myself Chase by Dean Koontz...

Back from the library with: The Motel Life ~ Willy Vlautin, Fall of Frost ~ Brian Hall, and My Revolutions ~ Hari Kunzru

Finishing up Infidel for the Muslim Women Group Read, so picked up Honor Lost from the library for my next book on Muslim women.

I got William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury in the mail this afternoon, through BookMooch.

And since Mom unilaterally made an appointment for me to have my own shearing (before 10 on a Saturday morning, no less), I stopped at the yarn store on the way home and bought The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns.

From BookMooch:
Stealing Jesus by Bruce Bawer

Stopped at the Goodwill yesterday and got:

The Line of Beauty by Allan Hollinghurst
Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver
Blood Memory by Greg Iles
The Blue Nowhere by Jeffery Deaver
Keeping Faith by Jodi Picoult
Heartbreaker by Julie Garwood
What's the Matter with Kansas by Thomas Frank

I also picked up the following solely to send out to Moochers:
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
Julie and Julia by Julie Powell

From BookMooch today: I got The Eyre Affair in the mail today, and it looks very good.... very interesting plot.

I went to Goodwill today and got:

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer
False Memory by Dean Koontz
The Clan of the CaveBear by by Jean Auel
Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier
Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
From the Corner of His Eye by Dean Koontz
The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant

And then I stopped at Target and got Peter & the Secret of Rundoon since my son and I both just finished Peter and the Shadow Thieves.

Even though I've already received 5 books in the mail this week, have 8 pending mooches coming in, and expect to get my ER book any day, I stopped by Half Price books today and grabbed 2 from my wishlist and two that sounded interesting:
Wild Swans by Jung Chang
The Masque of the Black Tulip by Lauren Willig
Vlad the Impaler by M.J. Trow
My Name is Iran by Davar Ardalan

I found another fabulous used bookstore today and got:

The Yacoubian Building, by Alaa Al Aswany
The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James
My Brother's Keeper, Marcia Davenport
Turtle Moon, Alice Hoffman
The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins
and for my husband,
How Soccer Explains the World, by Franklin Foer

Stopped by my friends mother's house because that's where she was and found myself drawn to her bookshelves (as always). This time her mother caught me and before I knew it I had Before I Go by Riley Weston and Eye Contact by Cammie McGovern. She would have given me more to read but fortuantely for me my friend chose that minute to leave. Else who knows how many more books would have been added to my TBR pile!!

After meeting with a friend today, I went into Barnes and Noble to engage in some much-needed retail therapy, and walked out with The Cement Garden and The Daydreamer by Ian McEwan, To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, and, off the bargain table, Earthly Joys by Philippa Gregory.

#228: The Yacoubian Building is a worthwhile DVD. I know the book was a huge best-seller in Egypt.

B&N had Alexander McCall Smith books, buy one get the second one 1/2 off. Plus my 10% discount there and than an email with an additional 15% coupon, forced me to buy two of his books.
Morality for Beautiful Girls and The Kalahari Typing School for Men.

This weekend our local library is having it's semi-annual book sale. For $54 I purchased 34 books. Four I listed on BookMooch and they were gone immediately. The others which included Unbowed by Wangari Maathai, World Without End by Ken Follett and A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah were for me. Unfortunately, my dogearing, spine binding husband is interested in reading a few of them too.

I made the mistake of stopping at Borders w/ 2 coupons--I got: The Forgery of Venus and Dervishes. Then I snuck them into the house w/o hubby noticing :)

My April ER book Two Brothers: One North, One South came today. Somehow I didn't realize it was historical fiction, I thought it was just straight history and now I'm even MORE excited about it. Plus it is in great shape and has a personalized inscription from the author in the front.

The only problem is now I can't decide which of the next two books I have to review I want to read next, this, or The Last Queen:A Novel of Juana la Loca. They both look so great!

A. McCall Smith is incredible - the creative and prolific mind of that man is unbelievable. If you like his No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series I also highly recommend his 44 Scotland Street and Sunday Philosophy Club series - altogether different from Botswana but definitely great reads.

I'm back from my weekly library visit with
We'll Always Have Paris by Harvey Levenstein
A Mist of Prophecies by Steven Saylor
Living in a Foreign Language by Micheal Tucker

Touchstones apparently are not working for me

From Audible I downloaded
The Moving Toyshop and Behold Here's Poison

It's my birthday today and my boss gave me Trails of the Sawtooth and White Cloud Mountains by Margaret Fuller. I am SUPER excited about this book since my husband and I plan on doing a lot of hiking / backpacking / camping this summer.

On another note, my dad and stepmom gave me a $100 B&N gift certificate. I was thinking of venturing out into sci-fi since I really have never read that genre before. Can anyone give some book suggestions to a first time sci-fi reader? I was thinking about the Dune chronicles, but don't know if they are good or not.

*Touchstones don't appear to work here...*

A couple of books in today: Krakatoa by Simon Winchester and Sea of Glory by Nathaniel Philbrick.

Touchstones don't seem to want to work at all this afternoon!

sferrando - Happy Birthday! And wow, what a great gift - enjoy!

Happy Birthday sferrando!

#238 sferrando, I'll recommend a SF book that not everybody would for a first time reader in the genre. The Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler. It's powerful and intense, not a cozy comfort read, but excellent. I've read it only once but it's one of those books that's stuck in my soul and will probably remain there for my lifetime. Butler won a MacArthur 'genius' award so she's not the typical SF writer. Still, she is one author I never tire of recommending. I'm not saying you will like her but I think most readers should give her a shot at least once.

Happy B-day, sferrando!

I got two PBS books and one BookMooch.

Gooney Bird Greene and Anastasia Krupnik from PBS, and Everything Must Go from BM.

Thanks for the birthday wishes, everyone!

#242 VisibleGhost ~ Thank you for the recommendation. I think I'll check it out.

Today in the mail I received two books from FrugalReader.com. They are:

Fannie Flagg's Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!
Edith Wharton's The Glimpses of the Moon

And in from the library: Ducks & Geese in Your Backyard by Rick & Gail Luttmann. My husband bought me two white Chinese goslings for my birthday (no joke) and I need some pointers on how to raise them!

Happy (belated) birthday, sferrando!

Today was the first half of our department's annual book auction. Today was all philosophy of science, and I didn't get as much as I would have mainly because of a particularly dedicated philosopher of science who had money to burn and was outbidding us all on everything. Came away with four books:

The Logic of Scientific Discovery and The Open Universe: An Argument for Indeterminism by Karl Popper
The Social Basis of Scientific Discoveries by Augustine Brannigan
and an outlier, Isaac Asimov's Book of Science and Nature Quotations

I hope to do better at the second half of the auction this Friday, with all the value theory and core analytic stuff going up - all the kinds of philosophy I actually specialize in, and so will be willing to spend a bit more on.

In from the libraries today:

Two in the Far North by Margaret E. Murie

Dead Certainties by Simon Schama

Beautiful Children by Charles Bock

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

The Gold of Exodus by Howard Blum

April 4, 1968 by Michael Eric Dyson

Pagan's Vows and Pagan's Scribes by Catherine Jinks

Breaking the Maya Code by Michael Coe

No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod

I got a B&N online gift certificate for National Admin. Assts. Day or whatever they are calling it this year. I ordered Out Stealing Horses and Skeletons At The Feast. Can't wait to receive them.

I got The Dark Tower by Stephen King from PBS today. Much bigger than I thought it would be!

Just got back from the outlets shops in Reading PA. The book shop had a sale on Buy Three get the fourth for a $1.00, and with it's already low prices of $5.00 to $6.00 for most of their H/C books had to take them up on a few.
Got the following;

War of Honor (Honor Harrington Series, Book 10) , Echoes of Honor (Honor Harrington Series, Book 8) and
Empire From the Ashes by David Weber
The Regiment: A Trilogy (Regiment Series) by John Dalmas

From PBS today and yesterday:

Ceremony in Death by J.D. Robb
Sisters: The Lives of American Suffragists by Jean H. Baker
Celebration USA by Douglas Frantz

#250 nancyewhite: Glad to find another fan of the "In Death" series here on LT, although I will admit that Ceremony in Death is probably one of my least favorite in the series. I am currently in the midst of reading them all again.

Finished Willy Vlautin's The Motel Life (Grrr-eat!) and starting Brian Hall's Fall of Frost. Hall's I Should be Extremely Happy in Your Company was also great)

From Oxfam yesterday:

Maigret Meets a Milord by Georges Simenon
Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan

It didn't come into my home, but it came to my attention. I noticed a book on my husband's shelves in his home office that was NOT science fiction, so I claimed it.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, first Scholastic trade paperback printing. I already have a hardback copy and the audiobook, but I'll add it to my shelves.

I have no idea how this came to be on his shelves, neither does he.

Many new books today (okay, technically yesterday, I just got up today). Culinaria Greece and Culinaria France, these books are absolutely beautiful. I also got City of Falling Angels, All She Was Worth, Crimson Petal and the White, Samaritan, and My Name is Red. Three of these are to replace library books I know I won't have time to finish. I also got five of the Poetry for Young People series for my daughter. She's only two now, but I'm hoping she'll appreciate them someday. Can you tell it's payday?

In today's mail were:
The Adventures of Mr. Thake - J. B. Morton (London: Jonathan Cape, 1934 Florin Books re-issue), which I had hoped would be a true first edition rather than the Florin pocket book. It is a series of comic letters from a parody of an Englishman to Morton's 'Beachcomber' persona. I already own the sequel.

The Spider's Bride - Debbie Gallagher (Holicong, PA: Prime, 2007). This is a romantic fantasy about a human woman and a faery prince. I am a friend of the author.

#254: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
I have no idea how this came to be on his shelves, neither does he.

Maybe it Apparated?

:)

#257 extrajoker - Good answer! I'll have to tell my husband.

And, wouldn't that be wonderful! I love the idea of things just showing up magically.

The Story of Forgetting by Stefan Merrill Block

Mao II by Don DeLillo

My Antonia by Willa Cather

Elizabeth Costello by J.M. Coetzee

The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy

All from BookMooch!

#259 karenmarie: Yes! that would be grand... If we could just go to the shelf to get a book, and the perfect book, one we didn't even know we wanted, would pop out into our hands...

It was almost like Christmas here...5 free books came in the mail today:

I got a bonus ARC this month, Firefly Rain, and it is next on my TBR pile.

Two books from BookMooch: Team of Rivals, which is on Barack Obama's shortlist, and One Hundred Years of Solitude, which is a 1001 book and the excerpt that I read sounded really magical.

One book from PBS: Lolita, a book on the 1001 list and I'm a bit unsure of whether I want to read or not.

and One GIFT book from a fellow LTer, The Teahouse Fire, which has been on my WL for a while, and I'm going to have an asian read marathon.

#261 I re-read Lolita in February and really loved it. It was, in places, a tough read, but beautifully written and great execution. Also, when I read it the first time at age 13, I totally missed the humor in it. Give it a try.

Just pulled In the Wake of the Plague out of my mailbox. Doesn't the Black Death sound like a fun topic?

#261 - Lolita is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. It's on my list of top 5 books ever. Give it a chance - the subject matter can definitely be off-putting, but the book is well worth it. Such a great read. Nabokov is a fantastic writer. I can't say enough good things about this book - my vocabulary is just not big enough (Nabokov's is, though!)

Did anyone else see that his son is going to go ahead and allow the last novel to be published? So exciting!

Also, I have a dumb question - what is PBS? In terms of acquiring books, that is.

PBS = Paperback Swap

Took me a while to figure out, too. Until I did, I ran across a number of books that people had swapped and thought, "now that's an odd book for PBS to sell!"

#265 jfetting: I did just see that Nabokov's son was publishing his las novel. I the headline and thought the name sounded familiar, then looked over at the stack of books from today's mail and seen it was on Lolita's spine.

TY, whymaggiemay and jfetting for the encouragement on Lo-Lo. The mom in me cringes about it, but the reviews assure me that it's not a pervert's manafesto.

and PBS is found here.

The magical brown truck delivered Sarah Dessen's newest book, Lock and Key, to my door this morning.

Definitely not a pervert's manifesto! And thanks nancyewhite and AnnaClaire and thekoolaidmom for explaining PBS.

(I did think it was the other PBS, too, AnnaClaire. I was pretty confused!)

Let me add my thanks for clarifying the PBS mystery. I was sure it wasn't the TV station but couldn't think what else it might be.

264 - fleela - my daughter read A Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague. I don't know the author but the book affected my daughter enough that we went to Eyam a couple of year ago. Fascinating! And not really depressing.

A Lifetime of Secrets Frank Warren

Miracle at Speedy Motors Alexander McCall Smith

#271, 264 -- Author of A Year of Wonders is Geraldine Brooks. I haven't read it, but it's highly recommended here on LT and I've been on the hunt for a PB copy.

From the Science Fiction Book Club - Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch, Alien Crimes edited by Mike Resnick, and Old Man's War by John Scalzi.

Through BookMooch - Angels and Demons by Dan Brown.

Finished a big project today so I had to celebrate by stopping by Barnes and Noble on the way home. I left with:

Bulls Island by Dorthea Benton Franks
What Would Audrey do? by Pamela Keogh

and Peony in Love by Lisa See

They have been added to the growing mountain of a TBR pile.

imanivrn, let us know if What Would Audrey Do? is good or stupid. I saw it for the first time earlier this week and I was sooo tempted. If I could be just a little bit like Audrey Hepburn, I'd be a better person.

A friend just loaned me Maiden Voyage byTania Aebi. The story of the first America women to sail around the world solo.

I got a free book yesterday!

I decided off the cuff to go and see Will Self talk about his new novel "The Butt" at the Bloomsbury Theatre last night. I trudged into town and arrived at the venue about 20 minutes before the show was due to start, only to find a rather sheepish member of organisers Blackwells' staff, standing in a corner, dishing out copies of the new book because the event was cancelled. He gave me a book even though I hadn't paid the £8 for a ticket. So, as I result, I have a £14.99 hardback copy of "The Butt" that cost me nothing apart from my train fare.

The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing

In today from the libraries:

Brother, I'm Dying by Edwidge Danticat - I am excited to finally get hold of this one, it has been on my TBR list for a while

I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company by Brian Hall

Intimate Kill by Margaret Yorke

Job, a Comedy of Justice by Robert Heinlein

The last 3 are all LT recommendations that I am looking forward to reading.

I stumbled upon a sale in my local bookshop, so..

A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
Wild Animals (the touchstone's got it all wrong; it's a book about mammals, reptiles and amphibians.)
Tanglewreck by Jeanette Winterson
A Very Long Engagement by Sebastien Japrisot

Went to target today for some lunch and snacks for work and somehow found myself in the book section....which is within eye sitght of the food aisle but not really near. Luckily I'd already picked up me food items and so was fortunate with only adding one new book to my TBR pile. Though there were so many that sounded good!

My pretty new book is Come Back* by Claire Fontaine

And in 3 to 9 days I'm expecting a pretty package from Amazon filled with lots of books. But I'm not gonna think about THAT unexpected purchase just yet. ;-)

*incorrect touchstone...and they are being finicky for my right now. Will try again later.

I got one of my BookMooch books in the mail today, Love in the Time of Cholera. I read an excerpt of it awhile ago, and it seemed to be beautifully, even poetically written.

From my local Value Village..

Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation
The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason
Watermelon by Marian Keyes
Justice Hall by Laurie R King
What's a girl gotta do? and Revenge of the cootie Girls both by Sparkle Hayter - how can you resist an author with a name like that?

--touchstones acting up--

I purchased at the store B&N last nite The House in Riverton and got from B&N online Unaccustomed Earth and Now Face to Face. However Unaccustomed Earth was filthy as was the box it arrived in. So I'm off to B&N store today to exchange for a nice fresh clean copy. Jhumpa Lahiri is in for a book signing next week and I want my copy to be nice for her to sign :)

>284 sydamy:.....I thought The Piano Tuner was wonderful. I hope you enjoy it also.

>284 sydamy:,286 I loved The Piano Tuner also. A great book, I thought it was very nicely written and I enjoyed the way it slowly unfolded into the story.

Living within walking distance of Harvard Square is going to bankrupt me. Last night's purchases: Three signed copies of A People's History of American Empire signed by both Howard Zinnand Mike Konopacki. I will give them as winter holiday gifts to family members. For me, Quintessence... Realizing the Archaic Future: A Radical Elemental Feminist Manifesto by Mary Daly.

>284 sydamy:,289 Have either of you read A Far Country, also by Daniel Mason?

From PBS:

Girl (Maladjusted) by Molly Jong-Fast.
This is interesting to me because I've been wondering how the second-wave feminists did at raising their daughters. The woman I mooched it from said it made her think a little less of Erica Jong. So at least in this case, maybe not so great. I'll have to read one of Rebecca Walker's books as well for a larger sample :-)

#284, 289, 290--I read Piano Tuner as well and enjoyed it. I just purchased A Far Country at Borders. I would be interested to hear if anyone has read it also. And, did you like it? How does it compare to Piano Tuner.

I haven't read A Far Country - I have friends that have and liked it equally as well as Piano Tuner. They did say that it took a little longer for them to get into the story but when they did they really liked it.

Zoomed into the Thrift Shop on the way home from 1/2 day work as a reward before getting VERY BUSY this afternoon and evening.

My Life with Groucho: A Son's Eye View by Arthur Marx
A Place of Hiding by Elizabeth George
Silhouette in Scarlet by Elizabeth Peters

I am glad to hear the raves on The Piano Tuner. I haven't read anything by Daniel Mason, but now I have another book to add to my tbr list. Thanks :)

Today I went to my local bookstore to exchange a booklight (you know, the small ones you clip to the book so you can read in bed and not have to get up to turn out the light) just to exchange and not buy...yeah, right...

I bought two from the bargain table: Janet Evanovich's Plum Lovin', and Harlan Coben's Promise Me. I also bought one full price: The Messenger by Lois Lowry.

Hello, my name is Alisha, and I'm a compulsive book-buyer...

Stopped by the library after the gym today and checked out A Poisoned Season by Tasha Alexander and The Lady Elizabeth by Alison Weir.

Came home to find Perfection Salad by Laura Shapiro and Murder Most Royal by Jean Plaidy waiting in the mailbox from fellow bookmoochers

#296 thekoolaidmom--I feel your pain--when I go to return/exchange one book I end up w/ a couple more--they just hop off the shelves into my hands and there's nothing I can do about it.

Hello, my name is Maureen, and I too am a compulsive book buyer!

Hello, my name is Linda, and I am a compulsive book buyer...
Just started Shadow of the Wind which may become my favorite book of all time! The mailman delivered my ZOOBA BOMC selection, Too Late to Say Goodbye by Ann Rule. In March I read the first three Lee Child Jack Reacher books and was introduced to Darkly Dreaming Dexter. I guess I'm in my serial killer phase right now.

Went to the semi-annual library sale yesterday and got the kids 6 books each and then for myself I got:

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
The Year of Fog by Michelle Richmong
She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb
The Corset Diaries by Katie MacAlister
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis

All 19 books for $8, too!

#300 KymberK Great books... I've only got one of those, Slaughterhouse Five, I've never read it, though.

Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town in from bookmooch.

I used a Border's coupon on a hardcover copy of The Painter from Shanghai by Jennifer Cody Epstein.

Also received a swap copy of George Eliot by Jennifer Uglow--a Virago Pantheon Pioneer.

Some of the books I've added to my pile this month:

Astrid and Veronika
Wit's End
Mudbound
Novel Destinations (an early reader book!)

plus a big pile from the library.

I loved The Piano Tuner and Year of Fog.

#304 - Let us know how Mudbound is. It was one of my choices today at Chapters. However I bought The Known World by Edward P. Jones .

Picked up today from the local paperback book seller:

Ring
The House of the Seven Gables
Seven Gothic Tales

From the discard cart at the county library

Dead Reckoning - David Treadway
A place where the sea remembers - Sandra Benitez
Oracle Night - Paul Auster
Bastard out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison
Staircase of 1000 steps - Masha Hamilton
Lady Oracle - Margaret Atwood
The Enchanted April - Elizabeth Von Arnim
Of Love & Shadows - Isabel Allende (This copy looks like it has been under water & dried out but still readable.)

Stopped at an estate sale on my way home from lunch. Kept myself to three books, somehow:

Blood for Dignity: the Story of the First Integrated Combat Unit in the U.S. Army by David P. Colley (first edition)
Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
and (the real find) . . .
Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads by Rudyard Kipling. An original printing of an edition published in 1898!

#308 rocketjk: The Kipling book is a great find! I am jealous.

I got in today from BookCloseouts.com:

God's Secret Agents by Alice Hogge

The Serpent on the Crown by Elizabeth Peters

The Volumetrics Eating Plan and The Volumetrics Weight-Control Plan by Barbara Rolls

Egypt: How a Lost Civilization was Rediscovered by Joyce Tyldesley

The Trojan War: A New History by Barry Strauss

Black Cloud: The Great Florida Hurricane by Eliot Kleinberg

Received The curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime in the mail last night from Marktplaats.nl

From my local branch of Sussex Stationers:

The World According to Bertie by Alexander McCall Smith
Fatty Batter by Michael Simkins

...and from my beloved employers Tesco plc:

The Night Watch by Sarah Waters

Yesterday I picked up:

The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi
The Automatic Detective by A. Lee Martinez
The Shotgun Rule by Charlie Huston
Steampunk by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer
Summerland by Michael Chabon
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

Just bought:

The new Penguin translation of Dostoyevsky's Demons (which is listed as The Possessed under Touchstones)
The original scroll version of Jack Kerouac's On the Road

Expanding my sci fi horizons I have ordered;
Gradisil by Adam Roberts (a faily new British sci fi author)
"We" by Yevgeny Zamyatin (an old classic)
Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi (current series)

And in the continuing pursuit of other interests
The Battle of the River Plate : The Hunt for the German Pocket Battleship Graf Spee by Dudley Pope ( Naval history WW2 )

I received my Early Reviewer's copy of The Size of the World by Joan Silber.

Yesterday was the second half of our department's book auction, and I bought way more this time:

Four Pragmatists: A Critical Introduction to Pierce, James, Mead, and Dewey by Israel Scheffler
Reconstruction in Philosophy by John Dewey
Human Nature and Conduct by John Dewey
Aims of Education by Alfred North Whitehead
Theory of Knowledge and Problems of Education by Donald Vandenberg
Pursuit of Truth by W.V.O. Quine
Philosophical Essays by Bertrand Russell
The Portable Nietzsche, edited by Walter Kaufman (I already had this book, but this old edition was just beautiful and in great shape, so now I have two...)
Ethical Issues in Business: A Philosophical Approach by Thomas Donaldson
Ethics and the Conduct of Business by John Boatright
A Source Book in Indian Philosophy by Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan
The New Dictionary of Thoughts: A Cyclopedia of Quotations, edited by Tryon Edwards
The Search for Meaning, edited by Richard P. Dennis
The Cosmological Argument by William Rowe
The Great Legal Philosophers: Selected Readings in Jurisprudence, edited by Clarence Morris
Open Society and Its Enemies, vols. 1 & 2 by Karl Popper
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber
Introduction to General Equilibrium Theory and Welfare Economics by James Quirk
Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy by Joseph Schumpeter

and the real treasure, a beautiful leather-bound, eight volumes in four tomes, the Collier-Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Went to my 2nd favorite brick-and-mortar store for my favorite reason - we're at the beach for a 3-day weekend.

Quartermoon Books on Topsail Island, NC:

The Documents in the Case by Dorothy Sayers - about the only Sayers I didn't have!

The Mistress's Daughter by A.M. Homes

Almost a Crime by Penny Vincenzi

Another library book sale, and more books added to the growing TBR pile.

Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America by Stephen G. Bloom
Raise the Titanic by Clive Cussler
The Armchair James Beard edited by John Ferrone
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg
Holy Fools by Joanne Harris
North of Hope by Jon Hassler
Staggerford by Jon Hassler
We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates
Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table by Ruth Reichl
The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan

Another library book sale for me too:
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Crossing California by Adam Langer
Snow by Orhan Pamuk
Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel
The Making of Britain: The Dark Ages by Lesley Smith
The Kings and Queens of England: A Tourist Guide by Jane Murray
Dancing Girls and Other Stories by Margaret Atwood
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd
TheThree Musketeers by Alexander Dumas
and
The Twits by Roald Dahl

Plus four picture poetry books for my friend's new baby.

Today I went to look at a potential new apt and on the way there I saw a sign for that towns library booksale. I blame the sign for what happened for on my way home I somehow found myself in my friendly neighboorhood borders....and I walked out with:

Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie - the Green Dragon group is discussing their next group read and this is among the choices. made me nostalgic to read it again.
Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead - because i like vampire books and vampire schools seems to be among the hot new thing. even if it sucks it has to be better than Twilight right?
The Queen Geek Social Club by Laura Preble - only $3.99 on the really bargain bin table
The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro
When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Mercy Seller by Brenda Rickman Vantrease
This is How it Happened by Jo Barrett - about a girl who decides to kill her ex....this is the line that sold me from pg 1 "An hour later, after Heather and I parted company, I found myself browsing the gardening section of Half Price Books. I was looking for a book on poisons. And I didn't want to pay retail." It made me giggle and a new book was adopted.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll - the book most likely to be the next Green Dragon group read.
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield - on CD and only $4.99 - another uber bargain bin find.

I also bought Ramona Quinby, Age 8 for the towns elementary school.

Think that I can sue my the above mentioned town library for the fact that I'm probably not going to be able to buy groceries next month?

The other night I was in the Las Vegas airport with a few hours to kill. Slot machines bore me, so...I walked around and spotted a (gasp!) Borders. The angel on my left shoulder whispered, "Don't go in. You have four books, a Vanity Fair and a Sky Mall catalog in your purse right now." Well, that angel should've been quieter, because the devil on my right shoulder heard her and immediately catapulted over my head, landed on the angel, pinned her down and shrieked, "Don't stand in the way of us and our Precioussssssss!!!" The only way I could keep the devil from pounding the angel into oblivion was to enter the Borders. What was a girl to do? Once inside, I was pleased to find that A Woman in Charge by Carl Bernstein was out in paperback and I didn't want the devil to start up again, so I bought it. It wouldn't fit in my purse, so I stuffed it in my wheelie bag.

I'm soooo bad.

citygirl I don't think you are bad at all. You could have gambled on the slot machines and lost all your money, but instead you spent it in a bookstore and got a wonderful book instead!!

I agree with momom, citygirl!

I a rare moment of sanity, I actually bagged up a dozen books that haven't moved off my to-be-read shelf in years, meaning to take them for the library friends book sale. Somehow, though, I went to the library, and came home with another book without having dropped off the ones I meant to leave. I think maybe I'm addicted.

Citygirl, I think that considering you were in Vegas, you made the most sane choice. You should be proud of yourself. Angel obviously had no clue.

Thanks, guys. I feel vindicated. That angel never knows what she's talking about. ;-)

The angel never does when it comes to a girl and her books. ;-)

I just added a swap copy of Rebecca to my Virago collection. I read it years and years ago and look forward to reading it again.

Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky.

karenmarie- I really enjoyed Suite Francaise.......The flight from Paris is really moving!

Just picked up Never Let me Go and am excited to start it. I just finished Someone Knows My Name which was recommended by a friend of a friend who runs a book group. I was afraid it was going to be a bit "Oprah's Club" for me but I was on vacation and OK with that. I ended up quite liking it. I'm on the hunt today for a book called Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids - has anyone out there read it?

Picked up The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde yesterday. Haven't read anything by him yet, but I heard so many good things about him on LT, I thought I'd give him a try.

Got an eBook of Karl Schroeder's Sun of Suns.

@331 Vonini - he's a good author, but he does tend to write series. So you might want to see if The Fourth Bear is part of one...and if they books are ok to read out of order. There is a whole Jasper Fforde group on LT and I'm sure they can help. I've only read Eyre Affair to date and don't know much about the other books of his.

Today I got two BookMooch books, Rhys Bowen's Evans Above and Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted.

From PBS: Lucy Rose: Here's the Thing About Me for my 9-year-old daughter.

Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion in the mail from BookMooch today.

A BookMooch copy of The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman by Louis de Bernieres

I picked up Our Kingdom Volume 4 and am already anxious to get my hands on volume 5 as well.

#336 hemlokgang That's funny, because The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman has been sitting on the shelf of the shared books at my gym. I've picked it up and put it back down several times. You'll have to read it and tell me if it's any good, so I can stop picking at it. :-D

I was about to write that I would get right on that, but I have a few others higher on my TBR pile......Soon, though, thekoolaidmom, soon.

>I just added a swap copy of Rebecca to my Virago collection.

I love this book.

From PBS:

Summer of Night and A Winter Haunting by Dan Simmons
The Society of S by Susan Hubbard
Queenan Country by Joe Queenan

In addition to the BM book I got today and the others I expect this week (not to mention the library sale last weekend and the other in another week and 1/2) I stopped by Half Price Books tonight and picked up
Grass Crown by Colleen McCullough
Organic, Inc by Samuel Fromartz
The Healthy Hedonist by Myra Kornfeld
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (for this month's book club)
Woman of Sand and Myrrh by Hanan al-Shaykh
Second Nature by Michael Pollan

>333 Irisheyz77: Irisheyz77

Tnx! I'll look into that! I don't like reading books from a series out of their order, but it didn't seem like part of a series. I'll have to check that out.

#343 Vonini: Jasper Fforde has a couple of different series: the Thursday Next series and then the Nursery Crimes series. The Fourth Bear is the second book in the Nursery Crimes series. Here is a list of both series and the related titles if you are interested:

Thursday Next Series
The Eyre Affair
Lost in a Good Book
The Well of Lost Plots
Something Rotten
First Among Sequels

Nursery Crimes Series
The Big Over Easy
The Fourth Bear

According to his website, the next book he has published will be the first in a new 3-part saga called Shades of Grey. It is expected out in July of this year.

>344 alcottacre: alcottacre

Thanks for the info! Maybe I should try to find the first part in the Nursery Crimes series first.

i got today, from amazon, the yiddish policeman's union--because of all the chatter last month on LT about it. i also got What If? writing exercises for fiction writers. i've been waiting the whole month for a big order from amazon that will hopefully get here soon

Water for Elephants from PBS - finally!

Today I received in the mail via BookMooch:

Soul Song by Marjorie M. Liu
One Eye Open by Karen Whiddon
and
The Demon Ororon Volume 1 by Mizuki Hakase

ANOTHER trip to HPB at lunch with a coworker (SHE is the one who wanted to go, I couldn't very well say no!). This HPB isn't as nice as the one by my house and doesn't have as good of a selection, so I managed to escape with just two books:
March by Geraldine Brooks
The First Princess of Wales by Karen Harper

In from the libraries today:

Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin

The Lost King of France by Deborah Cadbury

True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey

The Bone People by Keri Hulme

Life and Times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee

End of the Earth by Peter Matthiessen

Three Complete Novels by James M. Cain (book includes The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity and Mildred Pierce

Fermat's Enigma by Simon Singh

A Soldier's Book by Joanna Higgins

Lost by Hans-Ulrich Treichel

The Norths Meet Murder by Frances and Richard Lockridge

The Class of 1846 by John C. Waugh

Wild America by Roger Tory Peterson and James Fisher

Today, I got yet another note from local library that a book I put on hold was no longer in circulation. I average about 2 of these a month. It is very sad.

That will teach me to read the threads fast. I couldn't figure out why Arethra Franklin would write a book called Mistress of the Art of Death.
*Shakes head in shame*

Recieved People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks in the mail today from Amazon.

To Waterstones to get The Road, follow up to No Country for Old Men which I greatly enjoyed. '3 for 2' offer on that so "forced" to buy Fall of Kings, which I had been waiting for in paper-back, and Man of War, again a waited for paper-back. I also got The Neon Rain by James Lee Burke - not a book or an author I know but recommended in the weekend Times list of the 50 best crime writers.

Top of that list was, incidentally, Patricia Highsmith - I'm still thinking whether or not I agree.

Found the used bookstore near my new place - uh-oh.
Today, a mixed bag:

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt
The Complete Poems by Christina Rossetti
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco - it's about time a Medieval lit major actually own this
The Rules of Attraction and Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis

Lightning Rod by Dana Spiotta

Kid Free and Loving It (forget the author)

Knock Knock and other Stories by Turgenev

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

I sent away my first book for BookMooch today and it cost me $10.59 + 14% tax to send it from Nova Scotia to Vancouver. Since the book only cost $14.00 I'm not sure its worth it. Are the rest of you enjoying cheaper rates?

reeny - you're complaint is not a new one. From what I've read in the bookmooching group postal rates between canadian provences are ridiculously high.

perhaps you can get some tips here:
http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=30331

dang, reeny! 14% tax? $14 Canadian is still too much to pay cross-country... I don't know what you sent out, an unabridged Oxford? but it shouldn't cost THAT much. Here in the US, I send my moochies via media mail. It usually costs about $2.13 per package. I've never paid over $5, and the most I've ever paid was for a two books sent to one moocher.

#356 It would be cheaper for you to find a friend in the states and have them forward it to BC.

thekoolaidmom...we have it pretty easy here in the US. Canadian post is mega expensive. As Varielle says, its actually cheaper for someone in Canada to ship to the US then it is to ship the same book to the next provence over.

$14?!?!?!?!?

You should get internationally credit for shipping within Canadian borders then!

Dang, makes me appreciate USPS a bit more... and to shut up about the postage increase...

Just brought home a signed, first edition of Wrestling with the Angel of Democracy: On Being an American Citizen by Susan Griffin. And she also signed my already-owned copy of The Book of the Courtesans: a Catalogue of Their Virtues.

Also bought Sappho translated by Mary Barnard and Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love by Helen Fisher.

#356 .. ouch! If canadian post is so much more expensive (if that is your media rate, thats horrifying!) maybe bookmooch should adjust points accordingly .. such as canadians should get an extra point or two for each book they agree to send out, just to even out the cost or something. It seems like that might help balance things, $14.00 is scary. I send out 4 or 5 books at once sometimes, at $14 a pop i'd be broke as hell.

OK - let's try this with the proper 'touchstone' brackets...

We have a great bookstore that offers books (new copies) for prices ranging between .99 & 3.99 (along with regular priced books of course).

Today's .99 cent acquisitions include:
In Case We're Separated by Alice Mattison
Household Words - A Novel by Joan Silber
and an old favourite, The Lost Garden by Helen Humphreys.

From BookMooch: The Sorrows of an American by Siri Hustvedt

katheebee,
Where is this wonderful bookstore? It would be worth the gas if not too far away from me.

Also received Fairyville by Emma Holly in the mail when I got home yesterday.

Two MORE books yesterday (that must put me at 20 since Saturday, should have more BM books coming this week) in from ReaderViews, Politics Noir:Dark Tales from the Corridors of Power by Gary Phillips and Storm Over Morocco:Finding God in the Midst of Fanatics by Frank Romano

Stopped at Brazos on the way home this morning to pick up a copy of local author Coert Voorhees' new (and first) novel, The Brothers Torres.

From BookMooch: I just got Oxymoronica: paradoxical wit and wisdom from history's greatest wordsmiths. I've been really looking forward to reading it, and I'll probably snack on it while reading other books rather than reading it straight through.

My wonderful mailman Irving just brought me The Book Thief courtesy of Irisheyz77's contest on her blog and When the Emperor Was Divine from BM to replace the copy I lost.

i ended up in a fancypants bookshop today. books were expensive but i still coudnt resist (despite the snoby cashier), i picked up five NEW paperbacks for about 50€
fear and loathing in las vegas by Hunter S. Thompson,
the cleft by Doris Lessing,
on the road by Jack Kerouac,
Never let me go by Kazuo Ishiguro (wanted to see what all the fuss here on LT was about) and
There are Little Kingdoms by Kevin Barry.
feck the money these were worth it

They were technically already in my home, I just didn't know it. I went through some of my grandma's books she left to me when she passed away, and found:

A 1936 copy of Of Human Bondage by Maugham which was thrilling to me because I had just read it this past semester for a class, so I feel a connection through it.
East of Eden and The Wayward Bus by Steinbeck
Sarah Morgan: The Civil War Diary of a Southern Woman by Charles East
African Proverbs and Wisdom by Julia Stewart
America 1900: The Turning Point by Judy Crichton
And the Reader's Digest hardcover 1991 print of Uncle Tom's Cabin

I got David A. Clary's Adopted Son: Washington, Lafayette, and the Friendship that Saved the Revolution in the mail today, through BookMooch. I had two dozen points to spend, and this is what I spent one of them on.

@371 jlcardwell - I'm glad that the book arrived safely! I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did. =)

I stopped at Borders for lunch today and walked out with The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde.

Woo hoo! Good day! I picked up three for me at the library, Searching for Paradise in Parker, PA by Kris Radish, Twenty Wishes by Debbie Macomber, and The Place to Be: Washington, CBS, and the Glory Days of Television News by Roger Mudd. I'm taking home one for my husband, Delusion by Peter Abrahams, and he tells me there's a UPS package waiting at home! Now that's a good day.

I had the morning free (okay, I skipped out because I wasn't giving a TAKS test today) and stopped in at Half-Price Books. I got Half a Life and Sweet Hereafter in hardback, as well as The Elephant Vanishes and Club Dumas. I also ordered five from Amazon and am expecting one ordered last week. Obsession, anyone?

Edited to TRY to fix touchstones.

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks is one of the best reads of 2008 for me....can't put it down.

And tonight I came home with a signed first edition of the immigrant suite: hey xenophobe! who you calling a foreigner? and a signed copy of Presenting Sister NoBlues both by the legendary Hattie Gossett.

Tomorrow is May, right? I get a fresh start.

Got my copy of Rite by Tad Williams

I started a new job this week, so I ordered and received:

ADD and Success
ADD in the Workplace
The Girl's Guide to Being a Boss (Without Being a Bitch)
and How to Work with a Secretary.

The last one is turning out to be totally unnecessary b/c my new secretary is the most adorable, helpful thing ever! And she actually knows what she's doing!

Ladies of Liberty: The women Who Shaped Our Nation by Cokie Roberts. It is my book club selection for June.

I went to Goodwill today and WENT CRAZY. I got several off the 10 for $1.00 kids' books, and got 15 for myself... and one for BookMooch.

For myself:
Sophocles I
Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Beloved
Dickens' Hard Times and Great Expectations
The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
Billy Budd by Herman Melville
Tell No One by Harlan Coben... I seem to be collecting his books, I guess I like him... :o)
Black Dalia by James Ellroy
Grisham's Skipping Christmas
The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb
Elmore Leonard's Get Shorty and Be Cool I loved the movie "Be Cool," thought maybe I'd like the books

For BookMooch, Love in the Time of Cholera because it's highly wishlisted.

AND--- the actual reason I went in in the first place was to find Jane books --- Sense and Sensibility

23 books to get one... Sense and Sensibility. The only J.A. book I need now is Mansfield Park, then I'm having a Jane-athon!

Went to Waldenbooks today and picked up Mansfield Park to complete my Austen collection. Now, as soon as the BM Austens get here, I can have my Jane-a-thon. :-D

I also bought another copy of A Wrinkle in Time, this one for my nine-year-old. It's a wider book for smaller hands, and it has bigger print in it. I think she'll do better with it than the pocket books. She was upset because she didn't have a copy of The Giver and couldn't read along. She'll be happy with AWIT.

This was last night's purchase, actually:

Unleashed: Poems by Writers' Dogs, edited by Amy Hempel and Jim Shepard

Hey guys, come join us in May

The Hot Flash Club by Nancy Thayer - I needed something lightweight to read after "Dance of the Dissident Daughter" by Sue Monk Kidd. I've got a great local library that keeps up really well with the current lit. So I don't purchase unless it's something they don't have and I just have to read it.