Books Brought Home, May 2009 part 2

Since the first one has gone over 225 messages, I figured I'd start a new thread for the last 10 days of May :-)

I got a trifecta today, Woo-Hoo!

First, Fed-Ex stopped by and dropped off Something Beyond Greatness to be reviewed for a blog tour... June 29th, my birthday, is Mt. TBR's stop..

Then the Big Brown Sleigh set the dog bell off (made my Ratty go crazy and bark like mad) when he deposited two books in the lawn chair: Carve Your Own Road and The Crying Tree.

and finally, Missy, my rat terrier on edge and barking at every thing and one that moves, just went off when the mail man brought me Dragon Riders of Pern, which is an angel mooch for geophile

I've never gotten something from all three services in one day before! Pretty cool! What, no DHL?

I got my April ER book, Lost Boy from FedEx.

Later, the mailman brought me a nice package from Powells. Only one book was for me, The Green Beauty Guide, but I did get three books for hubby for Father's Day (I know it is early, but we have a baby coming sometime between now and then, and if the books aren't here and wrapped before baby, it isn't happening):
The Homework Myth
The Myth of Laziness
Watchmen

Cool for a new thread. Will post my new books soon. Just don't want to miss all the new book goodness.

>228: IndyReader- It's been quite a few years since I read A Simple Plan but it's a terrific crime thriller and the film version wasn't half bad either. I say go for it! I'm also looking forward to Olive Kitteridge, I hope to get to it early this summer, if I can snag a copy!

It's been a while, but finally my cobweb filled mailbox played host to River Angel by A. Manette Ansay and the Deadly Dance by M.C. Beaton.

"my cobweb filled mailbox"

lol@ comment

from the library (after promising myself I wouldn't, I have enough books to read for the month, thank you):

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson
Rapunzel's Revenge by Shannon Hale
Naruto Volume 42
Naruto Volume 43
Naruto Volume 44

S'OK, those will be read fast...

If anyone reading this thread is from Atlanta, Druid Hills Bookstore, one of Emory University's bookstores, is relocating at the end of the week, and is currently having a huge sale. Every book in the store is at least 40% off, including all books published by past and current Emory faculty such as Salman Rushdie, Umberto Eco, and Jimmy Carter. The sale ends today, and the store closes at 6 pm.

I stopped there this morning, after giving a lecture at the medical school, and bought these books:

His Illegal Self by Peter Carey
The Thief and the Dogs and Rhadopis of Nubia by Naguib Mahfouz
The Road Home by Rose Tremain
White Guard by Mikhail Bulgakov
Rose: Poems by Li-Young Lee
Gods and Soldiers: The Penguin Anthology of Contemporary African Writing , edited by Rob Spillman
Evidence-Based Medicine for PDAs: A Guide for Practice by Allan F. Platt
Salvador Dalí, or the Art of Spitting on Your Mother's Portrait by Carlos Rojas
How to Read Beauvoir by Stella Sandford
Colonialism and Neocolonialism, The Wisdom of Sartre and The Imaginary by Jean-Paul Sartre
The Loss of El Dorado: A Colonial History by V.S. Naipaul
The Mule by Juan Eslava Galan
Kierkegaard: An Introduction by C. Stephen Evans
The 21st Century Health Care Leader, edited by Roderick W. Gilkey
To Repel Ghosts: The Remix by Kevin Young
My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet's Life in the Palestinian Century by Adina Hoffman
Case Studies in Pediatric Infectious Diseases by Frank E. Berkowitz, MD (one of my favorite professors when I was in residency at Emory)

I got a nice little stack of books today from a couple different publicists, one who works for a publisher and one who doesn't:
Secret Son by Laila Lalami
Wall of White by Jennifer Woodlief
If Your Kid Eats This Book, Everything Will Still Be Okay by Lara Zibners

Got two books today, one is an ARC from St. Martin's, The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams, and the other from PBS Demons are a Ghoul's Best Friend by Victoria Laurie.

My youngest daughter brought them in to me and said with disgust, "MORE books?" Then rolled her eyes and left. hehehehee :-D

I bought Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow today. I started reading it at the mall while munching a slice of Sbarro's, only to be interrupted by an elderly gentleman who had noticed the cover and asked if I was a Pynchon fan. I told him I was, and he said he had never met a Pynchon fan before. I told him I never met anyone who even knew who he was.

TOUCH NOT The CAT by Mary. Stewart ( ancient mooch)

The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse: A Novel by Louise Erdrich

Birchbark House The by Louise Erdrich

The Beet Queen by Louise Erdrich

Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich

(All from BetterWorldBooks, and itt is teelgee's fault. I did love Tracks so much though)

Land of a Hundred Wonders by Lesley Kagen
from a friend at work.. I often give her books and she got me back today..

woe is my shelves..

doc...HOLY Smoke!

eta

losing battle with T-stones..

Today was fill a bag for $1 at the Friends of the Library book sale. I came home with:

Izzy, Willy-Nilly by Cynthia Voigt
Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt
Rifles for Watie by Harold Keith
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
Holes by Louis Sachar
Much Ado About Nothing by Shakespeare and
The Pearl by John Steinbeck

taking a stroll after dinner can be a dangerous activity .... especially if somehow, a Barnes & Nobel bookstore appears in front of you in the process. As the humidity of the evening threatened to overwhelm my husband and I , we decided to seek refuge for a few minutes in the cool comfort of B&N. Few minutes stretched to an hour, stretched to 2 hours ... and before we knew it, we were both clutching baskets filled with books ... how do they manage to jump in?

But while restraint is not my strength, we realized that it would be far too self-indulgent to purchase all that were piled haphazardly in our baskets... so we decided to limit ourselves to 4 books each and 3 music CDs.
My literary loot included :
Without Reservations by Alice Steinbach
Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips
Silent on the Moor by Deanna Raybourn
The Taste of Innocence by Stephanie Laurens

*gives a little happy sigh*

Borders NZ (aka Whitcoulls *shudder*) had a 30% off voucher this week so I bought American Gods by Neil Gaiman. I can't wait to read it!

Well, we are headed for Half-Price Books tomorrow. they will be having 20% off sale for the weekend. Hope to bring home some books :0)

*eek* kiwiflowa I recently got American Gods, but I haven't started it yet. I look forward to hearing what you think of it :-D

I stopped by Half Price Books and was pleasantly surprised to see the 20% off sale. I was very restrained and only got Ulysses and Bastard Out of Carolina, and a sticker book for the wee one. I also found a copy of Stiff in my mailbox when I got home. And while I'm fessing up, I have about six more coming from Amazon. I should stop now.

#14 cameling: Love the anecdote :-) and I know what you mean about books mysteriously jumping in your basket, they always want to follow me home, too ;-) Great book choices, btw.

Picked up from the Friends of the Library:

The Caine Mutiny haven't read it in 40 years
Too Late the Phalarope having read Cry, the Beloved Country for the first time this year, I've become a fan of Paton and couldn't resist this one for 25 cents
Desert Queen, the Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell

I also went to Borders (with 2 coupons), but strangely couldn't find anything to spend my money on. Very odd.

cameling isn't that funny when I'm in either Borders or B&N the books are screaming my name and some actually jump off the shelves into my hands and then end up coming home with me :-)

thekoolaidmom & momom248 ... I think Nova should be alerted to this very mysterious phenomenon. It clearly requires some scientific investigation, and I'm sure we can find enough members in LT to volunteer as their subjects .... as long as the production also pays for all the books that keep leaping into our baskets.

#22 cameling Ooh, I'm on board with any experiment that PAYS FOR the books that jump in my basket. I'll give it my all and hold nothing back... in the name of science, of course. :-D

By the way... would the "study" be willing to pay for more shelves, as well?

Forgot to add that I got three books in the mail today :-)

Celestine Prophecy on the recommendation of an SL friend, Beautiful Child by Torey Hayden on PBS's recommendation, and Scottish Folk and Fairy Tales, also on PBS's reco.

Yes yes yes--please pick me for that study and like koolaid mom said--they need to provide more shelves as well for us volunteers and they need not pay me a dime--just buy my tons and tons of books. Can we start at Borders? I added to my TBR pile w/ my Borders coupons Shogun and The Likeness. As stated above, they flung themselves off the shelf into my waiting arms.

I've finally taken steps and bought myself a new bookcase to house all the books that have hopped into MY hands over the past couple of months...

Today I was picking up some bookshop stock from the charity shop (books that have come off the shelves, £4 a donation sack full, woohoo!), and managed to grab an extra 4 new books from the shelves in about two and a half minutes before I paid:

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
Emma by Jane Austen - a shiny pretty new version. :-)
Miss Garnet's Angel by Salley Vickers
Catherine the Great: Love, Sex and Power by Virginia Rounding

And you know what, I just realised I forgot to check the main non-fiction shelves at the top. I was in a rush... Dammit!

I got a used boxed set of the three Bronte sisters' complete novels, bound in moire silk, for the approximate price of paperbacks. Good buy.

I was severely tempted by other things, but managed to hold myself back; I'm 'saving up for something better.'

I made a promise to my husband a few weeks ago, after an enormous haul from a library sale, that I WOULD NOT buy any more books until we go to NYC (in October). I'll be hitting the Strand, Argosy, The Drama Bookstore, a couple of mystery book shops. I'm going to tear that place up.
In the meantime I still have BookMooch. Isn't cheating if I'm not buying...

20> Maggie, Desert Queen is a heck of an adventure story. The whole book club liked it. I thought it was not the best writing, but the power of the story was so compelling I turned it into a project, reading first Gertrude Bell, then Janet Wallach's book, onto Dreamers of the Day (without the background, this would have been meaningless, and finally The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Have fun.

I also went to Borders yesterday with a 40% coupon and found nothing to use it on. From the bargain books I got The West Point Atlas of War: The Civil War, and, for buying that, I got a 30% coupon. The atlas will go on a stack of books about nineteenth century American history that I may read someday.

I couldn't find my AARP card, or I would have stocked up on some of the inexpensive novels I'd like to have around.

Robert

Lately I haven't been able to find many of the books that I want to buy the most at Borders. Their selection of books from small publishers is quite scanty, unless these books have won an award or otherwise become popular.

From my trip to the Half Price Book Store The beginning of spring by Penelope Fitzgerald and The Civil War Narrative Red River to Appomattox by Shelby Foote, both for 20% off. Went across the street to Borders to use my 40% coupon on The Best American Short Stories edited by John Updike and Katrina Kenison.

I absolutely did not plan on buying any more books before July, but I just got a coupon.

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Oranges are not the Only Fruit - Jeanette Winterson
Circus Shoes - Noel Streatfeild

And without any coupon:

As You Like It - William Shakespeare
Harry: A History - Melissa Anelli

Now I'll be a good girl and forget I have a credit card till September at the very least.

Aw hell i'm gonna be in sooo much trouble! I just ordered 3 books off amazon just so i could get free postage because a book that i really wanted had only 2 copies left in stock and I think it's one of those books that's not easy to find so i broke down and bought Pagan's Crusade, Wicked Lovely and Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side. Now I have to somehow get these books into the house without anyone knowing and keep them hidden for the next three weeks so i don't get skinned alive for buying books when i should be revising :(

With a 40% coupon from Borders, I came home with Class Matters by the (correspondents of) the New York Times.

#28, thanks for the recommendation. I had been looking longingly at it on bookcloseouts.com, but then saw it for $1.50 at the Friends of the Library. Couldn't resist.

Got the following at B&N today -- entirely the fault of PhoenixTerran who made me go find Annie's Ghosts because of the review s/he did. They also had a 3-for-the-price-of-2 sale so I got To Rule the Waves, Hirohito, and The Forgotten Man.

Reminder to me--Don't read reviews on LT. They lead to a monstrous TBR.

I took my 40% coupon back to Borders and looked a little more closely:

On Physics and Philosophy by Bernard d'Espagnat. This is published by Princeton University Press so it shouldn't be a New Age interpretation of quantum physics, but something rigorous. But the author is French.

Robert

>32 RLMCartwright: LadyViolet - good lass yourself! I did the exact same thing when I was at uni a year or three ago. Just think, it's cheering you up so you'll feel happier revising, AND you have something to look forward to at the end of exams. So that gets rid of the guilt and leaves you free to work on your cunning plan to get them into the house unseen!

I found a couple more books in the shop stock that I wanted - I have to stop pilfering! - so I can add High Five by Janet Evanovich and Deception Point by Dan Brown to my TBR mountain range...

#34 maggie

I plan on doing the same

>37 mckait: mckait

.........yeah sure, you and me both...dream on.....

LOL @ jude

In May I brought home Shaking the Tree, Willow Weep for Me, The Prisoner's Wife, Can You Hear Me Now?, and Race Matters...

There might have been others I have forgotten...

I found a marvelous used book shop and made a few purchases:
The Elegant Universe
Toward the End of Time
Le Morte d'Arthur (in entirety -- 950 pages worth)
Letters from Nuremberg
America in the Heart
White Horses
The Garden of Eden
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; the Complete Sherlock Holmes VI
The Virgin in the Garden (must find the other 3 of the series)

Then on to Barnes and Noble for:
If I am Missing or Dead
The Last Summer of You and Me
Falling Love with Natassia
Anne of Avonlea
Anne's House of Dreams
The Chronicles of Avonlea
The Further Chronicles of Avonlea
The Road to Yesterday
Emily's Quest (these finally rounded out all the Emily and Anne books I had lost over the years)

Arriving in the post from Virago Modern Classics website in the UK at US dollars of $125.15: (won't do that again)
The Angel of Grozny
Faces in the Water
The Women's Room
A Game of Hide and Seek
A View of the Harbor
Dusty Answer
The Loving Spirit

And on the way from Amazon.com:
some Persephones:
Marianna
Nella Last's War
Nella Last's Peace
Good Evening Mrs. Craven
and also:
Kerry Greenwood's A Question of Death: An Illustrated Phryne Fisher Treasury
Marianna

I guess I have had a dry winter as far as buying books went and waaaay over did. But one can never have too many books, can one?

>41 rainpebble: Good job, Belva! Well done!

My gosh! I love The Elegant Universe ... I hope you enjoy it.

Hello LheaJLove;
I hope that I love it also. It looks to be fascinating and I can't wait to delve into it.

Hi christiquc;
Thank you very much.
Not too shabby for my over-imbibing, eh?

belva

I just used my 40% off coupon and my !0 dollars gift card and purchased 2 books:

Real Vampires Get Lucky by Gerry Barlett
Angels and Demons by Dan Brown (touchstone not loading.)

crazy4reading;
U R way smarter than me. Good on you!~!

#27 mstrust- The Strand is an amazing, amazing place- very nicely organized and somewhat more user friendly as they have now put folding chairs on the 2nd floor gor if/when you need to take a break from book searching

nice haul belva!

So here I am in Port Jervis, NY at the bottom of the Catskills and driving through some very quaint little towns, searching for something to eat before we expire from exhaustion and hunger after a satisfying hike when lo and behold, we find a cute diner ... next to a used bookstore. Diner was full .... so we thought we'd wait for a table in the bookstore. Seems like a good idea, right? Well, only if a good idea also included leaving with 2 bags of books! well heck, they were only $2 a piece, and a portion of the proceeds were going towards the local high school track team, so I figured it was my duty to make a few purchases.

Too bad this study thing hasn't a corporate sponsor or 2 yet ... ;-) shelves, Mckait and koolaidmom? I'm thinking the study should also provide an extension to our houses with roomed library stacks for our books!

so here's my haul today:
The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
The Many Faces of Alexander Hamilton by Douglas Ambrose
Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen
Bloom County by Berkeley Breathed
Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace
1,000 Places to See in the US and Canada Before You Die by Patricia Schultz
Innocent in Death by J.D. Robb
Cooking Club by Katherine Fausset
An Irish Country Doctor by Patrick Taylor

Happy Memorial Day to all in the US!
oddly enuff, some of the touchstones aren't working. what gives!

I like the way you think, cameling!

I have read one of your books.. An Irish Country Doctor which is a soothing and descriptive read. The Space Between Us haunts me on amazon's recommendations.....

happy reading :)

I'm still reading The Somnambulist and The Red Badge of Courage and Twilight, but this month I bought these to add to my already overgrown and unwieldy TBR list:

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
Fledgling by Octavia Butler
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
'Mater Biscuit by Julie Cannon
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Primitive People by Francine Prose
Nectar by Lily Prior
The Rice Mother by Rani Manicka
Arroyo by Summer Wood
Kaaterskill Falls by Allegra Goodman
Grace by Elizabeth Nunez
Fruit of the Lemon by Andrea Levy
Sacred Games by Vikram Chanda
Names of the Dead: An Elegy for the Victims of September 11 by Diane Schoemperlen
Read 'Em and Weep: A Bedside Poker Companion edited by John Stravinsky

And, for my first foray into audio books, I bought Sellevision by Augusten Burroughs and Restless by William Boyd.

And, one cookbook, Cooking Spanish by John Newton.

I Shall Not Buy Another Book This Month!!!

Thank goodness the month is almost over.

From the bargain books rack at Borders:

The Little Disturbances of Man by Grace Paley
Terrorist by John Updike
Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects by Bertrand Russell
Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries by Naomi Wolf

I used my 40% off coupon at Borders to buy Friendly Fire by the Israeli author A.B. Yehoshua, which was shortlisted for this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. I also bought Frida's Bed by Slavenka Drakulić, a novel recommended by SqueakyChu, and The Bathroom, a novel by the French author Jean-Philippe Toussaint.

Thank you # 46. I went over by 8 dollars. Really hard to buy books when you don't have the money...

Apparently the local library were giving away books at the train station this morning, so my hubby got The Used World by Haven Kimmel for me.

What a gem!

I saw other folks posting here who had been to the Half Price Books 20% off sale so I had to go. Right?

I got:
Hurry Down Sunshine by Michael Greenberg
Circling My Mother by Mary Gordon
Self Made Man by Norah Vincent
The Black Veil by Rick Moody
Snow Angels by Stewart O'Nan
The Inner Circle by T.C. Boyle

Bookgirl, is your husband the gem or are you referring to The Used World? I have The Used World on my To Buy list.

petersonvl, well I was referring to my husband for getting me a book. I hadn't heard of the book, but I've since checked it out on here, and it looks good.

Pig Island byMo Hayder, The Take by Martina Cole and The Final Detail by Harlen Coben. Really need to stop buying books!

Mike (the hubby) and I spent the day, yesterday, driving around the Detroit suburbs. We ate at one of my favorite restaurants (Olga's Kitchen) and then settled down in a Barnes and Noble in Royal Oak for about 5 hours. Gotta love being married to someone who likes to hang out in a bookstore as long as I do. We had never been to this Barnes and Noble. It had 2 floors and huge windows overlooking a very busy downtown street - and by "busy" I mean people walking together, people walking their dogs, bicyclists, motorcyclists, casual drivers, people walking in and out of restaurants and stores . . . it was very pleasant to see - pretty downtown area with lots of trees and activity. We parked ourselves on the second floor in front of floor to ceiling windows - chairs facing the windows. It was really unique to be able to sit and look down on the town so closely while perusing books. We really enjoyed ourselves.
And so I bought:
The Film Club by David Gilmour (was waiting for this to come out in paperback. Was scheduled for June but came out a bit early - cool!)
Dear American Airlines by Jonathan Miles
You Suck: A Love Story by Christopher Moore
and
Celebrating the Third Place by Ray Oldenburg

And then about an hour drive to home.
Fun Day!

(Touchstones not working?)

mckait, I've read The Space Between Us a few years ago and made the mistake of lending it out to someone who lost it on a vacation, so I was glad to find a cheap copy to keep. I liked the book. It speaks of a mother's protection of her child, and what she will do to ensure her child is not hurt or not continued to be hurt by another. It also provided an interesting insight into the social classes that prevail in India, and how a person who may think herself progressive, subconsciously falls back to her innate belief that she and her family are better than her servants when faced with accusations that they may have conducted themselves in a disgraceful manner.

Went to Borders on Friday with my 40% off coupon.

I bought
Kushiel's Mercy by Jacqueline Carey ( I have been waiting for the paperback to come out forever.)

Dayhunter by Jocelynn Drake (I have been anticipating this one as well.)

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (I have had it wishlisted on Bookmooch for a while now, but I could never seem to get it. I could not wait any longer.)

And another book that I can not recall at the moment!

I remember the other book!!!
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies I can't wait to read it!

Aside from my ARC's, I haven't kept up with 'other' books coming into my home this past month. To busy with the bookstore! I acquired Labyrinth and Sepulchre by Kate Mosse. They just looked to good to pass up!

Then this past Saturday I found Spirit of the South by Bill Harris. A beautiful coffee table book.

Went out for dinner with friends, and a couple of us just had to stop in at one of our local 2nd hand bookstores. I found The Cry of the Dove by Fadia Faqir and In the Belly of the Green Birdby Nir Rosen.

Into the Beautiful North: A Novel by Luis Alberto Urrea from B&N (g/c)

The Last Bridge: A Novel by Teri Coyne ARC (vine)

and from mooch...

The Impact of a Single Event by R. L. Prendergast

Crustaceans by Andrew Cowan

I went to Belfast last week on vacation and managed to make it to the Linen Hall Library book sale. There I purchased Thirteenth Room, Confessions of an Eco Sinner and Soldier's Return. What is it about me and book sales? I can't seem to walk away from them with nothing in hand. At Waterstone's Book Store in Belfast I purchased End of Mr. Y just because I liked the cover. Don't know anything about it but will try to find out when I finally get to it. My TBR pile just keeps growing.

Judging by the reviews, Y looks like a good choice!

I got a copy of Gossip of the Starlings from the publisher today.

Today I went to Sam's Club and bought Learning To Breathe by Karen White and A Bride In The Bargain by Deeanne Gist. Then in the 4 p.m. mail there was an ARC for The Jewel Box by Anna Davis and two books from Amazon The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue and Life Mask also by Emma Donoghue. Not a bad haul, I'm feeling a bit guilty but loving every minute of it.

I came back with The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and The Beautiful Miscellaneous after today's Borders run. I'm quite pleased with both of them.

One thing fun about a mail holiday is that I got a larger than normal sized stack of books today :-)

first, the Fedex man stopped by and dropped off an ARC of The Last Ember by Daniel Levin.

Then the mailman left the following in my lawn chair:

Slave to Sensation by Nalini Singh (an LT recommendation)
Stupid American History by Leland Gregory. Goes well with my Politically Incorrect American History book.
Name Me Nobody by Lois-Ann Yamanaka. I spotted this gem on the PBS's recently added slider.
Marley and Me by John Grogan. My middle daughter is still begging for me to read Dewey to here, and when she saw Marley she started having a panic attack of excitement.
Aberystwyth Mon Amour by Malcolm Pryce. I've been dying to grab an Aberystwyth novel for almost as long as I've been an LT member :-D

Yay! Christmas in May!

At The Heights bookstore that just opened on Smith Street in downtown Brooklyn:

Burnt Diaries by Emma Tennant

The Road from Coorain by Jill Ker Conway

Send: The essential guide to email for office and home

$1 a piece.

The mailman brought one Bookmooch today-
Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg.

#60. I loved Dear American Airlines. It was laugh-out-loud funny to me. I hope you enjoy it.

Today, I picked up the following from the Bargain racks at B&N:

mulvaneys-audiobook for my 10 hour round trip ride to Tupelo--$7
Mafia Summer-perfect light, summer read
War and Peace
Art of War
4 novels by Ernest Hemingway
Blue Blood

I had expected to wait awhile longer, but my mailbox had a package from Edward R. Hamilton in it.

The Secret History of the English Language by M.J. Harper. I like language, and I like English so I put it on a wish list when I saw it in a store. It apparently went almost straight to remainder; maybe it's not very good.
Historical Linguistics by Lyle Campbell. The touchstone points to the second edition; mine is not the second edition. This is something to dip into someday when I have the whimsy to dip into it.
The Linguistics Student's Handbook by Laurie Bauer. I thought this might give me a quick overview of the current state of affairs in the academic field I dropped out of decades ago.
The Enigma of Al Capp by Alexander Theroux. I would have liked to have had a shmoo, although I didn't know it when my older sister had one. What happened with Al Capp? Alexander Theroux has good word of mouth here; only one of his novels is available new at BN.COM, so I thought I would let him introduce himself to me with this booklet.
Is There a Duty to Obey the Law? by Christopher Heath Wellman and A. John Simmons. The bureaucracy that is paying my pension had a law enforcement component to it. I have long wondered whether a failure to obey the law is a moral lapse. I hope to learn something about that here.
Acceptable Premises by James B. Freeman. "God is not logical." "Sure he is; just assume him." Is that acceptable?
Romola by George Eliot. I could have waited and waited to see whether there ever would be a Norton Critical Edition of this. This version is cheap; it is a cute little two volume edition from Konemann. It will serve.

Robert

# 74 rdurick: I would have liked to have had a shmoo, although I didn't know it when my older sister had one.

Could you please explain what this means?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shmoo

My sister had an inflatable plastic one, which, I guess, would be virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. I wasn't into L'il Abner, but looking back on my life I would have liked to have had a shmoo.

Robert

Thanks Robert. I figured it had to be something like that but I was to scared to google it, because it means something quite different here.

Just one lonely book today... Baby Jesus Pawn Shop by Lucia Orth. You gotta admit, though, it's a fun title ;-)

I received to books from bookdepository in my office mail today.

Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer
It is in paperback in the UK. I just refuse to spend $25 on the hard cover.

Small World by Matt Beaumont
This is for my honey. Beaumont is one of his favorite authors but they do not sell his books in the states as far as we can tell. He will get a present when I get home today, so he will be happy. Time to bring the books I have been hording at work home.

I've recently started to read The Empty Chair by Jeffrey Deaver. It's the 3rd installment in the Lincoln Rhyme Series and it's thoroughly enjoyable....I really can't put it down!!

I've just purchased The Stone Monkey on Amazon and just hope that it gets here before I finish The Empty Chair.

On Sunday I dropped my wife off on the AT for her annual three-week hike. I stopped by a little place in beautiful downtown Waynesboro, VA called Stone Soup, which has organic 'n' relevant lunches as well as an eclectic collection of books for sale. I picked up a copy of Brighten the Corner Where You Are by NCer Fred Chappell, which I'm reading now, and The Maltese Falcon, which is July's selection for my library mystery reading group. I regretfully resisted several more appealing titles.

I just brought Dark Angels by Karleen Koen home from the library - I get wait to get started!

Oh, how I wish the Goodwill wasn't on my way home from work. But it is, and so I stopped. I got:
This Land is Their Land by Barbara Ehrenreich
Boom! by Tom Brokaw
Ines of My Soul by Isabel Allende
Why She Left Us by Rahna Reiko Rizzuto

I was bad again and bought 2 Nicholas Sparks books in WhSmiths. It was a groovy two-for-1 offer on certain authors and they had The Notebook and The Lucky One in a bundle. I have wanted to read The Notebook for a while now and I am very happy that i bought it since i read it as soon as i got home and wow for so small a book it sure got me hooked. I even cried at the end (which is a good sign) so it's up there with my other favs which make me get emotionally involved.
I also believe that my amazon order tried to arrive today but since i went out *literally* 15 mins before the postman arrived i've gotta go fetch it tomorrow and somehow bribe my sister to keep quiet about the books... methinks a large quantity of sherbet is in order...

From the library.
Still Life by Louise Penny
The Beach House by Jane Green
Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin

Why oh why do I keep going to the library, when I have so many books to read at home ? :p

Also from the library:
Multiple Blessings: Surviving to Thriving with Twins and Sextuplets by Jon and Kate Gosselin
Expedition! by Dana Fuller Ross
Public Secrets by Nora Roberts
Homeport by Nora Roberts
Mora than a mistress by Mary Balogh
Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor
Just Breathe by Susan Wiggs
Stuck in the Middle
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Received two books from The Book Depository today:

In the Falling Snow, the new novel by Caryl Phillips and The Armies by Evelio Rosero, which won this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

I also received An Elegy for Easterly from Amazon, a collection of short stories by the Zimbabwean author Pettina Gappah, which was favorably reviewed in The Guardian last month.

Errr... I brought home Basic Spanish by Berlitz ... haha .. does that count?

well i had a surprise this morning when i saw that the postman had brought a package i *wasn't* expecting. A bookmooch i'd requested last week but hadn't realised it had been accepted let alone sent- The Lovely Bones i wanted to read it to see what the fuss was about.
From the package from amazon:
Pagan's Crusade
Wicked Lovely
Jessica's Guide to dating on the Dark Side
Hopefully my parents won't discover these books so i may have to hide them more thoroughly because frankly looking in the book cupboard seems like a logical first step.

LadyV, are they looking for new items in particular or just more accumulation?

You could plan accordingly. ;)

I just received from BM Dave Pelzer's The privilege of youth which is the last of the pelzer books i have left to read!

Came home today with
The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh
World Without an End by Ken Follett
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
:)

#82 ktleyed

If you like historical fiction you will like Dark Angels. This one is a prequel to her other books. I raced through it when I got it last summer. I will say that it is not as good as the first book Through a Glass Darkly but it is very good. If you have read the Diana Gabaldon series Outlander you will like this one.

One of the things I like about LibraryThing's groups is the fact that there are some readers who are not afraid to stand up and say that they like historical fiction/romance. Sometimes it seems to me that it takes great courage to say that we like reading that kind of book. In the circles in which I move some people won't admit that they like "fluff" and sorry to say many of them consider historical fiction to be fluff. As for me - I have learned lots of history from these books and often they have led me to study about events or people I have found in these books. This last month I made a Jamie and Claire Fraser tour of several Revolutionary War battlefields in North and South Carolina because I had read the Gabaldon books. I thought it was pretty exciting stuff to see some of the places I read about in the books. So "fluff" can be stimulating in the same way a hefty non-fiction historical tome might be.

# 92: RedBowlingBallRuth
Wow all three of those books are ones that are on my wishlist :)

This weeks finds at the second hand bookshop:

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Frozen waterfall by Gaye Hicyilmaz - YA fiction

#85 I chuckled when I read your post. I do the same thing like all the time.

From the library:

Robert Wagner
Loitering With Intent
The Tiger in the Smoke

# 93 - benitastrnad - I definitely agree with you about historical romance. The authors do a lot of research for these books which helps to make them realistic and believable. The characters may be fictional, but the stories are so much more enjoyable when they interact with historical figures.

>90 jennieg: Jennieg - well i can't be sure since they may be able to notice books they haven't seen before , although i did have my recent bookmooch acquisition on my lap while my dad was in the room and he didn't ask about it so who knows?
I think i just need to avoid complaining that my book cupboard needs sorting again cos that's a sure sign that i've bought more books as i have to rearrange things so all the books fit on my shelves without any lying flat on top .

#93 and #96 - I so agree with you and I love Historical Fiction and Romance and am not afraid to admit it. These days it's a nice escape from life. I envy you your tour, DG is my favorite (living) author - I would love to do a tour like that! Anyone who knows me, knows I'm a Jamie and Claire addict - obsessed!

The next Diana Gabaldon will be published in September--An Echo in the Bone. I can't wait!

I stopped by Borders after work and picked up What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew. Then I got home and the mailman had brought my first ever Bookmooch book, Captain Alatriste.

Yeah!

just three books, but I'm eager to read all three of them... just wish I could read them all NOW, at the same time. alas! One brain, poor me!

From Bloomsbury, a copy of The Actor and the Housewife to review. I've got Austenland on Mt. TBR, also my Shannon Hale, which I've been waiting until after I finish all my Austen books before reading.

From a Canook BookMoocher: Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz

and from PBS Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami. Kafka on the Shore stays ever close to the top of Mt. TBR, but I've never picked it up yet.

SO MANY BOOKS! SO LITTLE TIME!

koolaidmom, I am forever in the position of wanting to read all of the books at hand NOW; I sympathize, even empathize. And I actually read the first page of Kafka on the Shore and decided that I might prefer to read it another time.

Meanwhile yesterday I had a midday event and an evening event at church in town. I had with me a 30% coupon for Borders. I spent a good bit of the interregnum at the book store and came away with:

Aporetics by Nicholas Rescher. I had spotted this on my last foray, and it was high on my list for this trip. On the back cover Ernest Sosa is quoted, "Having coined the term 'apory,' Nicholas Rescher takes up the topic of 'aporetic' reasoning. How are we to proceed when things individually plausible cannot all plausibly be true? Having revealed how this phenomenon pervades philosophy, he defines some of its main forms, and offers an applicable prescription." An expensive little book; I'm glad I got a discount.

Complications by Atul Gawande. This matches his book Better in my pile, and it was from the buy one get one half off table.

The Drunkard's Walk by Leonard Mlodinow. I like learning about the surprising and even more understanding it. I read a few pages in the store at the buy one... table, and decided it would be worth it. As I put it into LibraryThing this morning I discovered it was a duplicate isbn. I more than wiped out my savings for the day with it (I'm really bad at returning things).

Robert

#101 and 102

Don't put off Kafka on the Shore! It is a rare treat. Read it now! It will take a while to get into it but trust me - it will be worth it.

I got these books in May. And I promise not to get any more. In May.

Alfred and Guinevere by James Schuyler
What's for Dinner by James Schuyler
The Arboghast Case by Thomas Hettche
A Burnt Child by Stig Dagerman
The Courage Consort by Michel Faber
Desperate Remedies by Thomas Hardy
Frank Lloyd Wright/Georgia O'Keefe Duets
Giraffe by J.M. Ledgard
The Holy Sinner by Thomas Mann
Lines of Life byFrancois Mauriac
My Sister My Love by Joyce Carol Oates
The Odd Woman by George Gissing
Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo
Siegfried by Harry Mulisch
Spies by Marcel Beyer
Storm Rider byAkira Yoshimura
Teach us to Outgrow our Madness by Kenzaburo Oe
The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist

Most of these jumped into my arms when I happened to be passing through used bookstores. The rest came via BookCloseouts and Book Depository (with one ER book).

Stopped at the library in the next town. They always have a sale shelf. They had about 6 little books all in french for 75 cents each. I picked up "La Belle France" by A. De Monvert, published in 1916. It is actually a text book for a beginning french class. It is seems to be a travel essay. My grandson is taking french in high school. I thought it would be fun to have.

I just dropped by the library this morning and picked up Book of Daniel by E.L. Doctorow. I'm glad i did because I then went to Borders and they only have one Doctorow book in stock and it was a collection of short stories.

I have a few new books to list later, but in the meantime it was my birthday yesterday and I have lots of money to spend on bookishness, yay! My dad's giving me money for books, my sister's sending me an Amazon voucher, my mum's promised to get me 'The Angel's Game' (touchstone not working) when it comes out in a few days... The weirdest thing is, an old friend of mine from uni (slightly alcoholic, may or may not have set fire to the uni kitchen, practically has 'most likely to commit suicide' scrawled across his forehead), who I've been kind-of supporting via email since he left, randomly sent me a whopping £25 Amazon voucher with a happy birthday note and 'thanks for putting up with me' attached! It's far too much but what can you do... :-)

Oh, and I just nicked Digital Fortress from the shop stock, at least until I've read it!

I echo benitastrnad: Kafka on the Shore is brilliant. Among the top reads ever. Well worth any initial effort.

I just bought WAAAY too many books in the spirit of "No BEA? Books Anyway!". I'm going to have to wait until later (maybe tomorrow) to catalog and list them here though, because I don't think hubby needs to see that I brought home 28 books...

I bought Shanghai Girls annd Unaccustomed Earth at Costco and Columbine for my Kindle.

I went to Costco to buy food for a cookout and somehow The Sign by Raymond Khoury found its way into my cart ... I think my husband put it there as a surprise for me. No complaints from me though.:-)

I'm combining yesterday and today's books received.

from PBS I got Soft Spots by Clint Van Winkle, which I'll probably pass on to one of my former Marine brothers when I'm done reading it.

from BookMooch, Madness and Civilization by Michel Foucault.

and Fragment by Warren Fahy, which I'm dying to read. I'll probably read it after I get done with the book tour books.

Here is my list for May. After this I think I will post them as I get them.

Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively
Cousin Bette by Honre de Balzac
The Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra
Collected Stories of Wallace Stegner
In Case We're Separated by Alice Mattison
Music as Thought: Listening to Symphony in the Age of Beethoven by Mark Bonds
The Hill Station J. G. Farrell
Miracle at St. Anna by James McBride
Eugenie Grandet and Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac
Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell
A curtain of Green and Other Stories by Eudora Welty
The Wedding by Imraan Coovadia
Saffron Dreams by Shaila Abdullah
Scribbling the Cat by Alexandra Fuller
I KNow Some Things edited by Lorrie Moore
The Seduction of Silence by Bem Le Hunte
Leaving Home by Anita Brookner
The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
Rachel, Rachel by Margaret Laurence
The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri

Here's another one I forgot about which came from Alibris a few days ago.

Finding Oz: How L. Frank Baum Discovered the Great American Story by Evan I. Schwartz

#114 nzurisana I am soOOo uber-jealous of you right now! Finding Oz is in my Amazon cart for my birthday next month. Have you seent the website? I love playing on it.

#115 thekoolaidmom - No, I haven't see it, but I will certainly check it out and will also tell my son about it. He was for many years an active member of The Wizard of Oz Fan Club. Even went to yearly conventions every summer in Wilmington, Delaware. The book, by the way, is very attractive. So far I've just skimmed it for the pictures. I hope your birthday falls early in the month.

From a conference 2 weeks ago I brought home The Big Moo by Seth Godin and Choosing Brilliant Health by Rick Foster. From the sale table at Books-a-million today: The House on Tradd Street by Karen White,Queen of Broken Hearts by Cassandra King, The Children of Hurin by J.R.R. Tolkien, Rococo by Adriana Trigiani and finally The Deception of the Emerald Ring by Lauren Willig. I love sale tables!

It just felt like it had been too long since I bought a book at a brick and mortar Barny Noble's. Getting my Barny Noble wishlist out of the computer in the form that I need may not be possible, so it's hard shopping. I got:

Maps of Time by David Christian. It comes well recommended in the History from 30,000 feet group.

Robert

My latest book lists from B&N and Borders:

The Cutting Room by Louise Welsh, Mystery
It is a first book, set in Glasgow and is about a 'a dissolute and promiscuous gay auctioneer' who comes across some disturbing photographs after a murder. The photos make him want to find out more about the victim. The search leads him through the dark, seedy underbelly of the city. with a slant towards gay establishments. I saw this on LT and it interested me.

A Test of Wills and Wings of Fire both by Charles Todd, Mysteries
These are books 1 & 2 of the Inspector Ian Rutledge series. It is a series we are reading for my RL mystery book group. The series is set after WWI in the UK, and the main character is a shell shocked veteran who hears his dead corporal.

The Lord of Misrule and Carpe Corpus both by Rachel Caine, YA Urban Fantasy
These are books 5 & 6 in the Morganville Vampires series. It is a YA series set in modern day Texas, and concerns the teens of the town and vampires.

Blood Noir by Laurell K. Hamilton, Urban Fantasy
Book 16 in the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series. These are just horribly written, plotless bad sex-fests, but I can't seem to stop. I like a lot of the supporting characters, and I hope for more of them, and that Anita who has become hard, cold, self-absorbed, and nasty dies horribly.

The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds, Hard SF, Mystery, Space Opera
7th book in the Revelation Space series. Story is about the Prefect, local law enforcement for the Glitter Band, a 'vast swirl of space habitats that orbit the planet Yellowstone'. He is investigating an attack against one of the habitats that left 900 people dead. It turns out that someone is trying to take control of all of them.

I was in Borders yestersday, minding my own business, when The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet leapt into my arms and demanded to be taken home.

Hey Guys I started a thread for the June purchases if people want to flock over there :D

http://www.librarything.com/topic/65886