What did YOU buy today? January 2026

So far, only one from eBay:
Dear Fahrenheit 451

On my first day back at the library bookstore I got:
Becoming Madame Secretary
Maugham
Fourth Wing
Onyx Storm
Grabbed the last two to see what all the fuss is about.

From a silent book club friend:
The Chess Players

Jack pot at the local thrift:
The Slynx
Lord Hornblower
Hornblower and the Hotspur
Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies
Mr. Midshipman Hornblower
Hornblower During the Crisis

Picked up Onward to Good Things on a good sale! (It joins books 1 and 2 of the collection . . . will have to add book 3 soon maybe.)

Last year I added 88 books to my living space, between purchases and ARCs.

My goal is to post here *very* rarely this year.

This confession concerns two books I purchased today:
* Courting Disaster: Reading Between the Lines of the Regency Novel by Zoë McGee (seen in content from an English BookTuber)
* Advance Britannia: The Epic Story of the Second World War, 1942-1945 by Alan Allport (I bought Britain at Bay years ago, was reminded last week that I hadn't seen the follow up, asked a search engine when book 2 would be released, and serendipitously discovered it came out 1/6)

I got snookered. I ordered Lessons in ornamental Penmanship from eBay, because you know, calligraphy. I knew it was a pdf reprint because it’s in the public domain. Unfortunately, the reproduction was so poor it’s illegible. They printed two pages shrunken to fit on a half sheet. You can’t tell anything from the illustrations because the quality is so poor. The text appears to be 1/16” maybe less, more like 1/32”. So, microscope time. Count it as a lesson learned. Very sad. 😢

On a better note I found Tooth from the Tiger’s Mouth at my FoL.

I went to an exhibit at the Museum of Wisconsin Art: https://www.librarything.com/venue/121620/Museum-of-Wisconsin-Art, and had to buy the exhibition catalog: Frank Lloyd Wright : modern chair design

Then I went to Powell's: https://www.librarything.com/venue/354/Powells-Hyde-Park looking for two specific books, which they didn't have. But I still managed to come home with three books:
Books do furnish a painting, by Jamie Camplin
Modern architecture : being the Kahn lectures for 1930, Frank Llloyd Wright
The Norway building of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair : a building's journey from Norway to America: an architectural legacy, by Brian J. Bigler

I recently joined Paperback Swap and my first goodie was one I’ve been looking for forever:
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind: An Unauthorized Autobiography by Chuck Barris It made a great movie by the way.

From the FoL I picked up:
The Forager’s Guide to Wild Foods by Nicole Apelian since we all may be foraging soon. Also picked up:
Inside The Dream Palace: The Life and Times of New York’s Legendary Chelsea Hotel by Sherill Tippins which turns out to be a duplicate of one I already have. 😿

Dang. An ARC today: Homebound by Portia Elan (pub 5/26; literary/science fiction)

From Paperback Swap I got Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, Unfamiliar Fishes, and Conversion.

From the FoL: The Lyrics of Edna St. Vincent Millay and The Collected Sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay. These were older book club editions but in good shape. ALS, Thug Kitchen, Pirate Girl Falls through Beaver Dam.

From the pet rescue thrift: Travelers’ Tales: Spain.

From eBay: Wicked Women of the Raj

I went to a pop up sale of collectible books at our local library. They weren’t really all that collectible but I picked up a few anyway.
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Old Christmas: From The Sketch Book of Washington Irving by Washington Irving
Ride A-Cock-Horse and Other Rhymes and Stories (Everyman's Library Children's… by Randolph Caldecott
Perfumes: The A-Z Guide by Luca Turin
Chinese Characters: The Art and Meaning of Hanzi by James Trapp