Books Brought Home - April 2010

I received two books from Amazon this afternoon:

The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth
Everything in This Country Must by Colum McCann

I just picked up The Language of Bees at the library so I can be all ready when I get the sequel, The God of the Hive, as an ER.

I just started Zinn's A People's History of the United States and Elizabeth Strout's Amy and Isabelle. I figure they're different enough to read at the same time.

Shamelessly large haul!

Gazelle
The Fountains of Neptune
Entering Fire
The Stain
............all by Rikki Ducornet...whom i love...

Mind the Gap & The Map of Moments by Christopher Golden/Tim Lebbon...........Dark Fantasy, anyone?

A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth......Doorstopper, anyone?
Jamesland by Michelle Huneven

The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten, & Thursday Next:First Among Sequels...all by Jasper Fforde...just because I wanted them

Yum-o! The Family Cookbook by Rachael Ray (Touchstone is wonky!)

;-}

I received a book called That Monroe Girl from Bookmooch in the post - a historical novel I've never heard of but someone who mooched from me had it in her inventory and it sounded vaguely entertaining.

I also bought a whole bunch of books from a Book People stall at work today - they do mail order and books at work, and specialise in ridiculously cheap box sets. I got 5 picture books for my sons and a set of Horrid Henry books for them to grow into (a colleague was complaining about having had to buy them all for £5 each and here they were at 16 for £13). I also bought a set of Book Group reads at £10 for 10 - some I want to keep/read, some I probably don't, but at that price it's worth it for 2 books I want, a bargain for 3 or 4.

On my major monthly run to Costco today I spotted and bought Fool by Christopher Moor. I doubt that it can be as rich as Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, but it has been well received and could easily be good enough.

Robert

Having a Kindle is so bad for my wallet. Even though I do download my fair share of free/public domain ebooks (...200 is normal, right? BUT THEY WERE JUST SITTING THERE. FREE!), whenever I'm in a bookstore, I jot down the name and author of any book that looks interesting. And of course, if Amazon has it, I download a sample...get engrossed in the book...buy 10 books in a week, even though I don't get paid until two more weeks from now!

But to keep it short :)
A Brief History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. And three other of his works, as well, since I fell in love with his prose - Shakespeare, Mother Tongue and The Lost Continent. But the only one I intended to download was A Brief History, and the others just - called to me. Books, those devious enchanters!

Othello, which I'm reading for class. I got the Arden version (for scholarly notes) and a cheap, free ebook, so that I can read through without being distracted by all the lovely notes. One of my favorite Shakespearian plays, hands down. Second only to Hamlet, I think!

House of the Seven Gables, The Woman in White and Tess of the d'Ubervilles. I think reading The Thirteenth Tale put me in the mood for some Victorian tragedy.

Of course, these are only the ones I've downloaded today. March was an entirely different (gluttonous) beast.

I bought three books from Borders this afternoon:

Bicycles: Love Poems by Nikki Giovanni
Morning Haiku, the latest collection of poems by Sonia Sanchez
The Patience Stone by Atiq Rahimi

It's been a lovely week for books. I just got the Percy Jackson and the Olympians trilogy by Rick Riordan for my grandson, then just splurged on myself:
Your Presence is Requested at Suvanto by Maile Chapman a novel set in a Finish hospital for woman in which an American obstetrician is experimenting with a new stitch (sounds so much like the obstetricians I know I had to buy it)
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Making Rounds with Oscar by David Dosa
and an out of print novel from one of our LT authors Alison Wonderland by Helen Smith Listen to a blurb from the back: "From somewhere on the coast of England rumours arise of the sinister genetic crossbreeding of unsuspecting animal species. Alison is assigned to investigate the truth." How could I resist that?
I got a part time job working for the US census, so just spent my little week's pay in a most satisfactory way.

I buy books like they're the daily newspaper sometimes... but I really AM trying to be good. So I joined Paperback Swap awhile back, and Bookmooch last month to try and cut down on my spending... and I guess that's a good thing. It hasn't stopped me from acquiring books though:

Free from Bookmooch:
People of the Book Geraldine Brooks (received)
All seven volumes of The Apprentice Adept series by Piers Anthony
Ahab's Wife: Or, The Star-gazer by Sena Jeter Naslund

Bought these last Friday from Amazon.com: (all Hardcover)
Bradbury Stories: 100 of his Most Celebrated Tales by Ray Bradbury
The October Country by Ray Bradbury
March by Geraldine Brooks

Pre-ordered from Amazon.com weeks or months ago, but should be shipped this month:
The Inheritance Simon Tolkien
Watcher of the Dead: Book Four of Sword of Shadows J. V. Jones
The Desert Spear Peter V. Brett

And, this morning, requested two from Paperback Swap;
The Mystery of Ireta : Dinosaur Planet Dinosaur Planet Survivors by Anne McCaffrey - Paperback
The Dark Half by Stephen King - Hardcover

Oh, Still waiting for most of these to be sent... yet, with this many already and the month just getting started good... I might be buried in books by the end...

Now, as to what I'm reading at the moment:
The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabaldon
Flesh and Grass by Libby Cone (Member Giveaways)
Once in a Blue Moon by Leanna Ellis (Early Reviewers)
Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally

Last night we went out to dinner for my birthday, which isn't until April 4th, and my daughter gave me a present. I was pleasantly surprised, she gave me a book which is a parody of Twilight. She knows I loved the Twilight books but will read just about anything that makes fun of it. She gave me Nightlight by the Harvard Lampoon. I can't wait to start reading it. I also picked up a trivia book for my mother-in-law for Easter and I bought myself one too. I just can't remember the titles right now. I will hopefully add them later today.

Happy Reading All!!!

I have a batch of end of March books still to enter, but I thought I would put them in the new thread.

Used books from a local indie:

The Bride's Kimono and The Flower Master by Sujata Massey, Mystery
Set in modern day Japan, and part of the Rei Shimura series. They are for a RL book group.

The Death of The Necromancer by Martha Wells, Dark Fantasy
Have been looking for this for a while, it is OOP.

The Man Who Smiled by Henning Mankell, Mystery
Swedish mystery in the Kurt Wallander series.

New books from local indies:

The Court of the Air by Stephen Hunt, Steampunk
Start of a new series that looks interesting.

The Solitudes by John Crowley, Fantasy
Start of the Aegypt Cycle

Seven Archangels by Jane Lebak, Fantasy
It looked interesting and I have a thing for angels.

Cretaceous Dawn by Lisa Graziano, Time Travel
It looked interesting and I also have a thing for dinosaurs.

The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman by Angela Carter, SF
I have seen her name talked about in SF circles, but never read anything of hers, so I thought i would give it a try.

The Book of Love by Sarah Bower, Historical Fiction
Set in 15th century Italy, its about the Borgias and an innocent who happens to be Jewish, and who gets mixed up with them. Another 'Thing' - the Borgias.

Apocalypse 2012 by Garry Jennings, Thriller
Part of the Aztec series - though not written by the deceased Jennings. About the Aztecs in the modern world and the Mayan doomsday prophecy.

These are from my Local B&N:

Changeless by Gail Carriger, Dark Fantasy
Book 2 in the Parasol Protectorate . Story using horror beasties set in Victorian England.

Deadtown by Nancy Holzner, Urban Fantasy
Start of a new series set in Boston, with horror beasties running around in the real world.

About Face by Donna Leon, Mystery
Book 18 in the Commissario Brunetti series set in modern day Venice.

Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada, Fiction
Story about ordinary Germans who resist the Nazis

You Can't Always Get What You Want by Sam Cutler, Memoir
Story of his life in Rock & Roll. He was the manager for the Rolling Stones in the 60s.

A new month , a new reason to visit a bookstore !

Our local new/used bookstore allows us to trade in books in exchange for store credit. With my recently acquired credit, I brought home:

The Reader
The Ten Best Days of My Life
The History of Love

And I still have $50 in credit remaining! :)

I had a 30% Borders coupon. I thought I would drag myself book by book through the literature, history, and philosophy sections. But I had an emergency acquisition of a new computer yesterday. As many of us know, technology is not really ready for public dissemination yet. A first puzzlement is Windows 7 (I lost all my strength in operating systems when DOS was shown the door), so:

Microsoft Windows 7 in Depth by Robert Cowart and Brian Knittel

It was hard to pick a book from the five or so available. I just know that something I really want and can't foresee is in one of the books I didn't buy and not this one. I'm going to face the same problem buying a book on Office 2007.

Robert

Went to the Friends of the Library yesterday and came home with:

The Double Bind
Lying Awake

I have just bought Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan and also The Findability Formula by Heather Lutze. I am not a "techie", so am hoping these books will make me a little more savvy!

>crazy4reading, I bought Nightlight last month! It is absolutely hilarious! I love the Twilight books, but this was just fantastic - it is so ridiculous that you just smile and laugh to yourself as soon as you start reading.

I picked a route home that would take me by Barny Noble's rather than by the restaurant I had thought I would sup at. I needed a computer book, and a woman at church said she wanted me to read The Theory of Clouds to explain it to her.

They didn't have the novel.

Using Microsoft Office 2007 by Ed Bott and Woody Leonhard. I picked this one because I recognize the authors and because it is published by the same folks who published my Windows book so I won't have to slip back and forth among orthographic conventions.

I had seen The Third Reich at War by Richard J. Evans in a couple of bookstores. It is the third in a series, and I thought I had checked on line without success at finding the first two at BN.COM. The other two were in the store, so in addition to the at war book I picked up:

The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans
The Third Reich in Power by Richard J. Evans

With the magazine the total came to enough to make me breathe hard, and I have an unpaid shipment en route by mail.

Robert

I picked up The Bonesetters Daughter at Housing Works Book Cafe yesterday and am waiting for the next book in the Sookie Stackhouse series from those wonderful folks at Amazon

So far this month from Bookmooch:

Full Dark House by Christopher Fowler
the good good pig by Sy Montgomery
In the Fall by Jeffrey Lent

Soon, my monthly trip to my awesome thrift store.

Got Jasper Fforde's First Among Sequels at 40% off last Sunday.

A quick trip to the library yielded in

The Island by Victoria Hislop
Airman by Eion Colfer
Blindness by Jose Saramago
The Brief and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson

I received a BookMooch from Israel today:

Black Cross by Greg Iles

and

From Audible.com:

A Brutal Telling by Louise Penny
A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny

My SciAm Bookclub order was in today's mail:

Wisdom, from philosophy to neuroscience by Stephen S. Hall. Wisdom, per se is not much reckoned about. I have read one book on the subject mostly because there aren't many. The one I read was very narrowly constrained perhaps hoping that it would be taken seriously in academia. I hope this one will expand on the subject.

Superstrings and Other Things by Carlos I. Calle. An updating published this year that I hope to get to to be up to date.

Did Time Begin? Will Time End by Paul H. Frampton. Some of the basic questions that engage me. I have a little fear that this book will be too light weight or too much of what has already been said, but the proof of the pudding will be in the eating.

The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson. I like to tell the Unitarian Universalists who claim Priestly as their own and that he discovered oxygen that he did not discover oxygen; he discovered dephlogisticated air. It was up to Lavoisier to discover that it was oxygen. I hope by this book to become more fully informed on the matter.

The Science of Liberty by Timothy Ferris. There was the scientific revolution, the enlightenment, and the formation of the United States of American. There was also Joseph Priestly wrapped up in the lot covered in the previous book. Any way this is at least an interesting notion.

The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe by Theodore Gray. The book has been spoken well of here and appears on a lot of store bookshelves. I don't browse well, but I ordered this book for those times in my chair when I need to browse, and frankly I don't know all that much about the elements, but they are as immediate as me.

I have to pay for these now. Fortunately they were half price.

Robert

I went to Strand Bookstore in NYC today, and bought the following:

The Ministry of Special Cases by Nathan Englander: recommended by avatiakh
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami: for msf59's group read next month (re-read; I loved it the first time around)
Season of Ash by Jorge Volpi: published by Open Letter Books at the University of Rochester
The Museum of Eterna's Novel by Macedonio Fernandez: published by Open Letter Books at the University of Rochester
Ill Fares the Land by Tony Judt: recommended by Chatterbox
The Notebook by José Saramago
Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty by Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman: recommended by Chatterbox and rebeccanyc
The Water Cure by Percival Everett
Solar by Ian McEwan: recommended by mrstreme

I spent some time today with the ladies at my favorite bookstore, The Bookstore in Glen Ellyn, and came home with some personal recommendations they were so emphatic about I had to purchase:
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
Away by Amy Bloom
An Unfinished Score by Elise Blackwell

My first "new" book in quite awhile. The Lost Summer of Louisa may Alcott by Kelly O'Connor McNees.

From B&N for my RL book club read in May:

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry

My February ER book, The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick arrived yesterday. I'm going to savor this one.

From a fellow LTer - thanks Kerry! - : Provincial Daughter by R.M. Dashwood - straight out of the envelope into my handbag!

From BookDepository, that dastardly website with its free delivery, A Wall In Palestine by Rene Backmann. Can't remember where I saw it reviewed, but for once it wasn't on here. It looks great and has those cute wrinkly paper edges.

Just one - The Ladies of Grace Adieu and other stories by Susanna Clarke.

I got my ER copy of By Heart: Poetry, Prison, and Two Lives by Judith Tannenbaum and Spoon Jackson and finished it already. What a great book!

Received my ER copy of The Exile of Sara Stevenson by Darci Hannah. Think I will put Clara Barton down for now.

I walked from Southampton to Winchester today (about 13 miles from my front door) and once in Winchester I went into Waterstone's, which I had planned to do. I left my list at home. Came out with Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. I need some more science fiction/fantasy in my life.

I pulled my mail from the mailbox on my way out this morning. There was a box from Barny Noble in it.

Rules of the Game by Neil Strauss. I want to read how women are different from men.

Undateable by Ellen Rakieten and Anne Coyle. I presume this will explain my circumstances.

Beyond Totalitarianism edited by Michael Geyer and Sheila Fitzpatrick. There's more to totalitarianism than, "Gosh, how bad!" Our neighbors could be willingly complicit; we could be willingly complicit. This book looked good enough on the shelf for me to write down the title and eventually order it.

Robert

I'm trying not to buy so many books this year . . . but I couldn't resist these:

Solar by Ian McEwan
The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli
Silk Parachute by John McPhee

. . . and a new copy of an old favorite:

Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters by Annie Dillard

So much for not buying anything until I read some TBR books! Somehow I don't think reading 1 book justifies buying 20 more...

Bollywood Nights by Shobhaa De
Lover Avenged by JR Ward
Graceling by Kristin Cashore
The Indigo King by James A Owen
The First Part Last by Angela Johnson

These are books I bought after the first of April. I bought 16 over spring break.

I bought Picasso: A Biography by Patrick O'Brian this afternoon, after I saw the "Picasso and the Avant-Garde in Paris" exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Pushed by a coupon and an otherwise motivated trip to town today, I got briefly to a Borders. I had thought I would dig through it, but when I got there I didn't feel like it and had found this book which was on my wish list.

The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes. Five hundred of us have it already, but my cover is not one of the ones in stock so I used another.

I have a coupon for a "friend" that may inspire me to befriend myself.

Robert

I got 2 photography books on sale today:

Life - Faces of Ground Zero, Portarits of the Heroes of September 11th, 2001 by Joe McNally

and

Superwomen: 100 Women-100 Sports by Jodi Buren

My latest bunch of books:

The Confessions of Catherine de Medici by C.W. Gortner, Historical Fiction
LT ER book.

Monstrum by Donald James, Thriller
Serial Killer in war-torn Moscow.

Corambis by Sarah Monette, Fantasy
Final book in the Doctrine of the Labyrinths series.

Death's Mistress by Karen Chance, Urban Fantasy
Book 2 in the Dorina Basarab series

Weaver by Stephen Baxter, Alternate History
Book 4 in the Time's Tapestry series

The Age of Zeus by James Lovegrove, SF
Book 2 in the Pantheon Trilogy

Angus, Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison, YA Humor
Saw this on LT and thought I would give it a try.

Fool by Christopher Moore, Humor
Moore's take on King Lear.

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe, Historical Fiction
Saw this on LT too. Set in Salem during the time of the witch trials.

Relationship Devotional 365 Lessions to Love and Learn By: By Abigail Wilentz from B&N.

It is definitely not Christian, if anyone was wondering. It lists itself as Reference or Self Help, I definitely mentally categorize it as Reference. It has many full color pictures with explanations, poetry, movies, classical characters, and books. I have been hankering for some poetry lately (particularly Elizabeth Barrett Browning or Emily Dickinson). This is such a fun book to read slowly. I may just read a few pages at a time. It wasn't even listed in Librarything even when I searched by ISBN. So, I added it myself.

My mother-in-law gave me The House on Garibaldi Street by Isser Harel. It is the story of the capture of Adolf Eichmann.

Actually went into a bookstore for the first time this month I think yesterday and came out with four books although one was not for me. The other three were in the ever-tempting 3 for 2 deal that Waterstones always has going.
Perfect Chemistry by Simone Elkeles - already read and loved!
Vampire Diaries The Return: Nightfall by L.J. Smith - somewhat wary because of the "meh" and "ugh" reviews on LT but I'm a completist and I want to read all of Smith's books.
The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan - looking forward to this although I don't really know if I will wait for the paperback of Dead-Tossed Waves if this proves to be a great read.

I reckon I'm doing alright with book-buying restraint this month but it may crumble as there as several other books that I want to get soon.

Well I received my ER book yesterday. I was pleasantly surprised because I didn't expect it that fast.

Broken Blue Line by Connie Dial

I may go to the book store either this weekend or sometime during the week. I need a book fix....

Just got back from the library's Spring sale, at which I splurged by spending 24 dollars on 24 books...(I only meant to spend 5!)
Among the more exciting finds...
a huge 2nd edition of Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary for my students to get lost in,
a 1938 edition of the Koran,
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison,
a Portuguese workbook,
a picture book of Beijing in Chinese (also for my students),
and my very own copies of Beloved and A Moveable Feast!

I picked up Exit Ghost by Phillip Roth in a bargain bin (the way I find all my Phillip Roth in New Zealand, for some reason), and The Victims of Lightning by my favourite poet, Bill Manhire.

(PS: Hi everyone, I've been away for a while!)

My aunt gave me The Happiness project . Looks like an interesting memoir !

Once again I find myself behind somewhat:
From the library:
Walking to Gatlinburg by Howard Frank Mosher This one looks so promising and I plan on starting it at the end of the week!
From Bookmooch:
Back in the World by Tobias Wolff Ever since reading This Boy's Life, I've wanted to read more of his work.
Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow Werewolves in LA? Sounds great!
A Gesture Life by Chang-rae Lee An LT rec! An author I need to try!

I went a little crazy at Book Culture yesterday, and bought 23 books:

Twilight & Moonbeam Alley by Stefan Zweig: Two stories by Zweig, published by Pushkin Press.

Badou & Žižedk: Philosophy in the Present: "Two controversial thinkers discuss a timeless but nonetheless urgent question: should philosophy intervene in the world?"

Letters from London by C.L.R. James: A series of essays written by the Trinidadian intellectual in 1932, soon after his arrival in London.

The Pen and the Sword: Conversations with Edward Said by David Barsamian: A collection of five wide-ranging interviews of the Palestinian scholar and critic.

Juan the Landless by Juan Goytisolo: A "surreal exploration and rejection" of the author's own roots; he "defiantly reinvents tradition and the world as a man without a home, without a country, in praise of pariahs."

Lighthead: Poems by Terrance Hayes: A collection of poems that "portrays the lightheadedness of a mind trying to pull against gravity and time."

White Egrets: Poems by Derek Walcott: The latest collection of poems by the Nobel Prize winning author.

Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents by Ian Buruma: A "sharp eyed look at the tensions between religion and politics on three continents": Europe, North America and Asia.

Ralph Ellison in Progress by Adam Bradley: The "first book to survey the expansive geography of Ellison's unfinished novel while re-imaging the more familiar, but often misunderstood, territory of Invisible Man."

The Tongue Blood Does Not Run Dry by Assia Djebar (recommended by avaland et al.): A collection of stories about Algeria in the mid-1990s, "a time when some 200,000 Algerians were killed in Islamist assassinations and government army reprisals."

Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era by Houston A, Baker Jr.

Night of the Golden Butterfly by Tariq Ali: The last novel of Ali's Islam Quintet, which "moves between the cities of the 21st century, from Lahore to London, from Paris to Beijing." This was an accidental purchase, as it looked interesting but I had intended to put it back.

Sonata Mulattica: Poems by Rita Dove (recommended by avaland): A "book length lyric narrative" about the mulatto violinist George Polgreen Bridgetower, who met and impressed Ludwig van Beethoven with his talent in the early 1800s; Beethoven created the sonata that forms the title of this collection in honor of Bridgetower.

William Faulkner: Novels 1926-1929: Library of America edition, which includes Soldiers' Pay, Mosquitoes, Flags in the Dust and The Sound and the Fury.

Dread: Poems by Ai: A collection of poems in which the author "adopts the anguished voices of adults remembering traumatic events from their childhoods—terrorism, war, sexual abuse, parental violence."

A Country Doctor's Notebook by Mikhail Bulgakov: A "delightful bvlend of candid realism and imaginative exuberance", in which the newly minted Dr. Bulgakov is assigned to the depths of rural Russia to become a lone medical practitioner in a vast country practice.

Beyond Boundaries: C.L.R. James and Postnational Studies, edited by Christopher Gair

Source: Poems by Mark Doty: "The poems in Source deepen Doty's exploration of the paradox of selfhood. They offer a complex, boldly colored self-portrait; their muscular lines argue fiercely with the fact of limit; they pulse with the drama of perception and the quest to forge meaning."

Three Novellas by Joseph Roth: Fallmerayer the stationmaster, The Bust of the Emperor, and The Legend of the Holy Drinker.

Naomi by Junichiro Tanizaki

Some Prefer Nettles by Junichiro Tanizaki

Du Fu: A Life in Poetry by Du Fu

Spain in Our Hearts by Pablo Neruda: Neruda's "most impassioned collection of poems", written during the Spanish Civil War.

I also bought Picasso: A Biography by Patrick O'Brian on Friday at the Philadelphia Museum of Art's gift shop, after seeing the Picasso exhibition there.

Just got home from a weekend away on a shopping trip. I brought home the following books:

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe
Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
The Monkey's Raincoat by Robert Crais
Remember Me, Irene by Jan Burke
A Faint Cold Fear by Karin Slaughter
The First Cut by Dianne Emley
Many A River by Elmer Kelton

Doing my Sunday differently, I plotted a trip to the bigger Barny Noble's brick and mortar. I didn't get everything on my list because..., and I got a couple of things that weren't on my list because... I had the Penguin edition of the Mahabharata on my list; it was supposed to be there and wasn't either on the shelf or in the stockroom.

I Like You by Amy Sedaris. This book has been around for a while now. It is attractive, especially in its title. I thought I would get it when whimsy struck. Whimsy was abetted by a copy of the book in hardcover on the remainder table. I will keep it with another book for browsing which I don't do...

The Holy Man by Susan Trott. This little fiction was asked about here at LibraryThing. I referred the seeker to the Name That Book group and when a title popped up (in the original thread) I put the book on my wishlist and got it a few hours later.

The Real History of the End of the World by Sharon Newman. Junk touchstone takes you to the title spam, so this is a link. This book was not on my shopping list, but I am a recreational apocalyptician so I thought I should have it, and the author is a graduate student so I am supporting a hungry scholar.

How to be a Perfect Stranger by Stuart M. Matlins and Arthur J. Magida. Having referred countless inquirers to the Name That Book group I used it myself last night to find this book. I had an answer this morning and the book in hand this afternoon. I have been a Unitarian Universalist for about fifteen years, and I'm getting sick of the things I'm sick of, so I'm thinking of pursuing Buddhism or becoming a Quaker. I want not to offend.

Upon the Altar of the Nation by Harry S. Stout. This is a book about the Civil War that is not just a they-marched-north recounting. It will go in my nineteenth century America pile.

Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada. One of the more important novels I have read in recent years is Europe Central. This year I have read Life and Fate and The Kindly Ones (curse this touchstone, too). I've read a few references and am working on Beyond Totalitarianism happily now. This book wasn't on my list, but it fits, and I already have a novel by him recommended, I think, in the Chapel of the Abyss group.

So I have to do an online order for the Mahahbharata and for Theory of Clouds which I didn't expect them to have and they didn't.

I hope my income tax bill is not too high.

Robert

>53 DeltaQueen50:: DeltaQueen50- I hope you enjoy Case Histories! It's terrific and The Monkey's Raincoat is pretty darn good too!

>53 DeltaQueen50:: DeltaQueen50- I hope you enjoy Case Histories! It's terrific and The Monkey's Raincoat is pretty darn good too!
Robert- Every Man Dies Alone was one of my favorite reads of last year! Excellent!

My ER copy of God of the Hive arrived Friday! I'm just finishing up The Language of Bees so I'll be all up to speed.

Berlin Noir arrived today - the first 3 Bernie Guenther novels by Phillip Kerr. I've started the first one, March Violets already (must stop bumping things off the pile when exciting packages arrive...).

I bought 2 books yesterday:
The Call of the Wild and White Fang
The Vampire Chronicles: Interview with a Vampire, The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned

I was passing the remaindered bookshop on my way to the library and noticed that they had a table of local-interest books outside in the sunshine. To my delight there was a stack of copies of the very recent In Tearing Haste, a collection of letters between Deborah, the now-Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, and Patrick Leigh Fermor. £3.99, absolute bargain, it was mine within two minutes!

Oh, and thanks to chrine's recent praise of The Shipping News, I nicked a copy from our shop stockroom this afternoon... ;-)

My Dollar store has books! And they're a dollar! I got The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios by Yann Martel, which I plan to read for my "Because the title sounded cool" category in 10 10 10.

I received Katherine Center's new book Just Lucky through Amazon yesterday

As I was in town dropping off a load of books I no longer wanted and some that were duplicates to my favourite charity shop I quickly browsed the book shelves and found two books that I wanted- I was restricted to only two by my tyrant sister who wanted to go home.
Got Beauty by Robin Mckinley - very chuffed with that I'd been hankering after a copy
and The Rescue by Nicholas Sparks - another one for the collection.
Both for only a fiver and they're in pretty good condition.

Just caved and bought two books I've been wanting:

Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel and Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose.

I also picked up a few for my almost 14 year-old daughter and a couple of these will probably land on my TBR shelf as well:

The Iron King by Julie Kagawa
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

Got my copy of Changes by Jim Butcher and I'm already more than half done reading it.

I had a surprise in the mail today:

American Journal of Numismatics, number 21, 2009, edited by Peter van Alfen. The listings on LibraryThing for this and the series it is in are really screwed up. This is the annual that we members of The American Numismatic Society get.

I also had a very promptly shipped and delivered order from Barny Noble:

The Mahabharata translated and edited by John D. Smith. In two quick but full length readings of the touchstones list I could not identify this edition, so this is a link instead. I have set out to read all of the Mahabharata in English and have a good start on it, but acquiring volumes of it is hard. This book has a small good reputation, and I hope for it to be a stopgap in my project. My computer and the store's computer said that it was in stock; it wasn't — I am happy that fulfillment and delivery from an on line order was so prompt.

The Dwarf by Pär Lagerkvist. A bunch of folks on LibraryThing paid attention to this novel for awhile. It sounded special enough for me to try.

The Theory of Clouds by Stéphane Audeguy. One of the elder women at church to whom I pay attention said that she would like me to read this novel and explain it to her. Couldn't hurt.

I don't need anymore books, but there will be more.

Robert

A visit to the library today got me A Madness of Angels by Kate Griffin (AKA Catherine Webb) and Who Cooked the Last Supper? by Rosalind Miles.

I also visited a couple of charity shops and found
The Mistress of Spices by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
and The Mysterious Flame Of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco.

For a fantasy reading assignment in one 6th grade class, I chose The Book Without Words by Avi.

Got my Amazon order last night:

When You Reach Me
Bridge on the Drina
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families

I threw into a short list of local errands a visit to Borders with a 33% coupon.

Great Short Works of Fyodor Dostoevsky introduced by Ronald Hingley. I used the coupon on this. I had been eying it for some time. I would liked to have found something more expensive that I just had to have. I had in hand a Library of America volume of Philip Dick novels, but I didn't just have to have them, so I went and picked this up promising myself some engaging reading.

The Wisdom Paradox by Elkhonon Goldberg. This was on the bargain table and fits with a couple of other books I own.

Robert

The first part of my book order from Amazon came in today:

Loving Geordie by Andrea Badenoch
King of the Streets by John Baker
Sand Fish by Maha Gargash

I received three books in the mail during the week:

The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton
The Education of the Stoic by Fernando Pessoa
Why Me?: A Doctor Looks at the Book of Job by Diane M. Komp

I added The Education of the Stoic to my wishlist. I have read some Pessoa, a while back, to my advantage and could use some more.

I can get into Job. Unfortunately Why me? is not available at BN.COM so it had to go on a different wishlist.

Thanks for mentioning these.

Robert

#73: You're welcome, Robert. All three were recommended by LTers in the 75 Books group, FlossieT, deskdude and tymfos, respectively.

My latest batch of books. Some are from local chains and some from Amazon Marketplace (used books).

B&N:

Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris, Urban Fantasy

Book 9 in the Sookie Stackhouse series of southern vampire mysteries.

The Man in the Window by K.O. Dahl, Mystery

This is another Scandinavian mystery, set in Norway. It is book 3 in the Oslo Detective series. It is book 3 and for some reason they are not translating the books into English in order.

The Winter Vault by Anne Michaels, Fiction

Saw this on LT, looked interesting.

Jade Man's Skin by Daniel Fox, Chinese Fantasy

Book 2 in the Moshui, the Books of Stone and Water . I have book 1 on order.

Borders:

Gaslight Dogs by Karin Lowachee, fantasy

New novel by one of my favorite authors.

Used Books from Amazon Marketpplace:

The Element of Fire by Martha Wells, Fantasy

Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera, YA

Things Unborn by Eugene Byrne, Dark Fantasy

The Floating Girl by Sujata Massey, Mystery

Non-Fiction:

Discontinuity in Greek Civilization by Rhys Carpenter, History

Vergina: The Royal Tombs by Manolis Andronicos, Archeology

In a fit of one-click madness to stock up for my upcoming trip I got...

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
Shakespeare by Bill Bryson
Rooms by James L. Rubart
Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom
The Imperfectionists: A Novel by Tom Rachman
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer

I am quite excited and unsure where to start!

Dancing starfish, I would say Major Pettigrew's Last Stand. It is not too long. It is funny and sincere. It is easy to read. You may feel as I do like sharing your thoughts or passing it along because it is so rich in tone and thought. It starts the wheels turning in your head and is a good warm-up for what is ahead in some of your other reads.

Have acquired 'Henry Adams and the Making of America' (2005) by Garry Wills. Henry Adams was an Historian, and was the grandson and great-grandson of two U.S. Presidents. His best known work, 'The Education of Henry Adams' (1918), is listed at the top of the list by Random House of the finest English-language non-fiction works of the twentieth century.

From the library, The Language of Bees and Revenge of the Spellmans.

From the bookstore, Runaways Volume 1, and Kingdom of the Golden Dragon.

My order from bookcloseouts.com arrived yesterday:

The Children's War
Hidden, Betrayed, Exploited and Forgotten by
The Boys of Pointe Du Hoc
After the Flag Has Been Folded, A Daughter Remembers the Father She Lost to War and the Mother who Held Her Family Together
The Lizard Cage
Abigail Adams
City Gates
One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life
A Blessing Over Ashes
The Unknown Soldier
The Cap: The Price of a Life
Kasztner's Train
Alfred Nobel
Afternoons With Mr. Hogan

Today I bought The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire.

Sanja- I loved both Stieg Larsson books. The third is released in the U.S. on 5/25.

welch, I'll say it til I die! I love Kingdom of the Golden Dragon! I wish I could get my students into it!

Books bought this weekend:-

Sunnyside by Glen David Gold
The Black House by Paul Theroux
The Glass Room by Simon Mawer
Northline by Willy Vlautin

>83 MissTeacher: Good to hear, MissTeacher! I'll let you know what I think - I've got to polish off those library books first.

BTW, I identified the wrong Spellman book - I got the newest one, The Spellmans Strike Again, which is another funny entry in this series.

You must have given me some good mojo, welch, because two students checked out Kingdom of the Golden Dragon today! I couldn't get them into City of the Beasts, the first in the series, but I didn't stress because they really don't need to be read in order.

What could be better than good book mojo? Glad to hear it!

That's what I had understood about the order - I haven't read the first one either.

I indulged myself a bit today in my university bookstore and bought three more Wordsworth Edition classics for the super awesomely cheap price of £5.97
The Lost World and Other Stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle I have all his Holmes books so I thought why not check out his science-fiction works?
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas - Loved Monte Cristo and I'd heard that this was just as brilliant so I picked it up.
The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield - I'm trying to collect as many classic female authors as I can and this seemed a good choice.

Still in the middle of Wolf Hall and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn for readalongs and nearly done with the audio of My Life in France. I finished The Founding by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles Saturday evening and really enjoyed it. Now I'm reading Watermark by Vanitha Sankaran, which is quite good so far and a very fast read, I expect to finish it today or tomorrow.

Came back from a visit with the folks with House of Splendid Isolation, Famous Writer's School:A Novel, In The Forest of Forgetting and The Harlequin Tea Set.

A couple more books arrived on the doorstep today:

Kingdom of Shadows by Alan Furst
All Shall Be Well by Deborah Crombie

From Various & Sundry places:

Dancing on my Grave by Gelsey Kirkland...the flip-side of Tutus and Toe shoes
The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud
The Body Artist by don DeLillo
Sister of my Heart & The Mistress of Spices by Chitra Divakaruni
Cane River by Lalita Tademy...I've heard wonderful things about this.......
Turn, Magic Wheel, A Time to be Born & The Locusts Have no King by Dawn Powell
Hotel Honolulu by Paul Theroux
.
.
.
.
.

;-}

I've wanted to read Dancing on my Grave by Gelsey Kirkland everytime I hear it mentioned ... adding to my wishlist. Saw Gelsey and Baryshinkov dance Don Quioxte at the Kennedy Center years ago -- actually slept out overnight to get tickets. Ended up scoring matinee tickets as well and got to see them twice because Baryshinkov had to dance both performances due to injury of matinee dancer.

I need a book buying intervention; I've put myself on lockdown for the rest of the month. Too many book buying trips (6 in the last week ... I think it's the lovely Spring we are having in NC). My last haul -- from Amazon -- will be it (really!)

I received four books from the bookscloseout.com sale:

The Green House by Mario Vargas Llosa
26a by Diana Evans
Little Mountain by Elias Khoury
Wounded by Percival Everett

My soon to be ex-partner at work also gave me his copy of Things Worth Fighting For by Michael Kelly.

I had a pretty good haul at the last day of our public library's book sale, picking up a bag of forty books for seven bucks. Heavy on my current interests, mysteries and bridge.

>93 dsstukes: Never saw Kirkland/Baryshnikov live....only taped performances. Did see her on 60 MINUTES shortly after the book was published...but THAT copy of the book has been gone for years...I was happy to find a copy on Paper Back Swap! And good luck on the Book Lockdown..I am merely at the Weaning Stage... and it's making me cranky!!

;-}

Story of O
The Stranger
120 Days of Sodom

and im not even into sadeism haha

Another 6 books have snuck home with me today although two are not for me and three are adding to collections by certain authors which I like and the last one was a pretty neat find. Basically all of them were justified by being really cheap - I only spent £11!
Midnight Alley & Feast of Fools for my friend
Shields of Pride for my Elizabeth Chadwick collection
Spindle's End because I spotted it in the Children's section of Oxfam
and The Parasites & Flight of the Falcon because they are two of the few du Maurier books which I don't have.

Three weeks ago they told me a book was coming, and there it was in the mailbox today:

Stephen Foster & Co. edited by Ken Emerson. This touchstoneless volume is in the American Poets Project from the Library of America. The volume contains lyrics from many more songwriters than Foster who is quite well represented.

I'll yoke it to my Ira Gershwin volume and put them together with the other volumes from the series.

Robert

April's been a reader's bonanza!

From LT ER I received:

Time Among the Dead by Tom Rayfiel (already read & reviewed)
The TMJ Healing Plan by Cynthia Peterson (reading, more like studying)

From Goodwill, which I happened to pass on my way to the TMobile store and which I hadn't even known was there (and all for $6.00):

On Beauty by Zadie Smith (trade paperback)
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen (trade paperback)
Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky (hardback)

I went to the library for The Cradle Robbers by Ayelet Waldman as a treat for finishing Shelby Foote's Civil War trilogy and The Man Who Loved China by Simon Winchester leapt into my arms. What could I do?

I can ignore a 20% coupon, but I haven't yet been able to ignore a 33% one, so Borders was part of my trip to town yesterday. I have not become engaged with Mark Twain's novels, but when he is just telling us stuff I find him cogent and entertaining. So I got:

Mark Twain: A Tramp Abroad, Following the Equator, Other Travels edited by Roy Blount, Jr. curiously enough. This is a Library of America volume.

A couple of shelves away they had a Library of America volume containing articles and essays about Twain. If one is still there next time I have a coupon, I may head in that direction first.

Robert

Today I received Impatient with Desire by Gabrielle Burton and Watermark by Vanitha Sankaran. I've started reading the latter first and when I finish, I'll read the former. Along with the other books I'm reading - which you can see in my "Currently Reading" collection - that should keep me busy through May... or most of it, anyhow.

I went to my library book club meeting last night and picked up our next read which is Down River by John Hart. I hope to start it this weekend since the forecast seems to be rain all weekend. I may be able to get a lot of reading done.

Happy Reading all!!

Monic'a

From BookMooch:

The Brothers K by David James Duncan

From Audible:

Cathedral of the Sea by Ildefonso Falcones
Deliver Us From Evil by David Baldacci

I felt like going a little mad today so I charged into town, bought three books in Waterstones and then went and bought some rollerblades because I could :D
Got Ash by Malinda Lo - singlemost *gorgeous* front cover I've seen in ages
The Splendor Falls - Looked interesting and it's purple
Dreaming of Amelia - I love Jaclyn Moriarty's writing style

Now I'm trying to lace up my darn rollerblades and I've made a start on Ash

#104 Monic'a, my library book club is reading Hart also. In our case it's The Last Child.

#104 and #107- I received The Last Child as an ER book- it was excellent

Had to run to the library tonight after work to return a couple of books, which I did, and guess what happened! I was walking along to the front door of the library, minding my own business ~ no, that's not entirely true. The truth is, after I dropped off the books & paid a small fine, I scurried straight to the popular section, just to see if anything new was there, you know how that is. And I found a new Ariana Franklin "Mistress of the Art of Death" novel, A Murderous Procession! I love when stuff like that happens.

Needless to say, as I really loved the first three in the series, I'm stoked!

And you couldn't keep it to yourself, could you? Damn, another one for the list. ;)

Got quite a haul from the Friends Of The Library Book Sale today--and I'm going back tomorrow!
I got:
The Beach by Alex Garland
Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Gone, Baby, Gone by Dennis Lehane
People Of The Book by Geraldine Brooks
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
The Tenderness Of Wolves by Stef Penney
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
The Lions Of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay
On Writing by Stephen King
The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd
Lucky by Alice Sebold
From The Dust Returned by Ray Bradbury
A Room Of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
Under The Banner Of Heaven by Jon Krakauer
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl
Now I just have to figure out where to put them all...

#110 jennieg I'm just a sharing kind of person. ;)

#111 LibraryLover23 You've got some great reading ahead of you! Three are among my favorites: Invisible Man, The Lions of al-Rassan, and On Writing. In fact, al-Rassan may be one of my top 10 of all time. Some of the others sound really interesting. Score!

The book I ordered came in. It was book 1 in the Moshui, the books of Stone and Water . I bought book 2 first by mistake.

Dragon in Chains by Daniel Fox

It is either Japanese or Chinese fantasy. I have to count the dragon toes to find out.

Wow LibraryLover! Wonderful finds!

My own trip to the library yeilded Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper.

The Borders 33% coupon led me where I thought it would:

The Mark Twain Anthology edited by Shelley Fisher Fishkin. This is a collection of short pieces by known authors writing about Mark Twain. I would often just as soon read about him as read him.

Robert

> LibraryLover23-That is an incredible haul! Good for you!

From the Open Letter Series:

Gasoline by Quim Monzo

Got home from work today to find two packages awaiting pickup: one I was expecting (a member giveaway: The Adventures of Short Stubbly Brownbeard by Alan J. Levine, an LT author) and one I was not (Black Hills by Dan Simmons, an audiobook from Hatchette that I asked for a couple months ago and had given up on).

Black Hills looks like a magical reality sort of historical about a Native American who was with General Custer at his death and the happenings between the Battle of Little Bighorn and the visit to the Black Hills by FDR in 1936.

I read the first three (short) chapters of Short Stubbly Brownbeard and am not quite sure what to make of it. It's about a reluctant pirate who has some exciting adventures in outer space. On short acquaintance, it seems to be of the same type of fantastical scifi epic as Hitchhikers Guide (which I love), in that the writing is clever, the comedy slapstick, the protagonist a bit like Arthur Dent, and his cousin Blackbeard, who apparently gets him started on his adventures, definitely reminds me of Ford Prefect. It's easy to read, there were a few really clever bits which I admit caused me to chuckle a few times, and, oh, yeah, did I mention, it's about pirates!?!

Did some book shopping while away over the weekend and then arrived home to find more books on my doorstep. My library is bulging with the addition of the following:

Me Cheeta: My Life in Hollywood by James Lever
Fires In The Dark by Louise Doughty
The Woman In White by Wilkie Collins
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
Walking With Ghosts by John Baker
Pride Runs Deep by R. Cameron Cooke
A Share In Death by Deborah Crombie
Come Closer by Sara Gran
Queenpin by Megan Abbott
The Song Is You by Megan Abbott

I've received three books this week:

White Masks by Elias Khouri - the latest release from Archipelago Books

The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama by David Remnick - order from The History Book Club

News From Home: Short Stories by Sefi Atta - from Amazon, to be reviewed for issue 6 of Belletrista.

I've just brought home many classics that I haven't read yet... Some Jane Austen and much, much more. I've been missing out so I've heard so its time to see what this is all about.

Three books:

The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano

And, because for some reason I seem to be reading (or about to read from the look of the tbr stack) books set during the Vietnam War, I thought I'd reread an old favorite on the subject, but when I went to look for it, it wasn't there (when and how did that happen?) . . . so I bought a new copy . . . Michael Herr's Dispatches.

I finally went to the book shop this month. I had been resisiting. I picked up a couple paranormal romance series novels.

Stealing Kathryn by Jacquelyn Frank
Darkest Whisper by Gena Showalter
and
Grave Goods by Ariana Franklin

Felt an urge to buy some books today so I bought three (2 on amazon which won't arrive until next week and therefore in May) and the other was crazy cheap.

Amazon buys:
The Reckoning by Kelley Armstrong - I needed this to complete the trilogy
The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson - looks *amazing*!

From the Works:
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters - hardback and cost me 1p I kid you not. I was returning two other books and they totaled £3.98 and the Waters books was £3.99 BARGAIN! Especially considering the hardback should cost £16.99 *evil cackle*

I feel rather proud of myself for getting three books for under £10 when they should cost three times that amount at retail.

Rush, rush, rush, and I managed to get into Borders on the way to the dentist yesterday with a 33% coupon in the act of expiring.

Power and Plenty by Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O'Rourke. This is a recent history of globalization in the last thousand years. The blurb on the back makes me suspect it will have a European focus. Flipping the pages, however, does bring in some history of Moslem trade.

Robert

Yesterday I stopped at Borders and got two books . Both are nonfics , Always Looking Up and My Jesus Year .

PBS book arrived today: Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr
Should be a quick fun story with the Fey.

Even though I went round a good 5 or 6 bookshops today I only bought two books!
Got Looking for Alaska by John Green and Becoming Bindy Mackenzie by Jaclyn Moriarty.
Both for the most bargainish price of £6 from an Oxfam bookshop :)

Absolute bargain - in one of Play.com's rather dubious 'sales', I found that they were selling signed hardback copies of Sophie Kinsella's Twenties Girl, with free delivery, for a miniscule £2.99! Which I could hardly pass up since it cost less than even the cheapest copies of the normal paperback...

Anybody who's interested - this Bank Holiday weekend (another week, another sale!) they're selling Mark Haddon's new hardback, signed again, at a similar price.

It was the last day of the month.

Curse Borders. I had a 40% coupon. I went out of my way with little time to spare and picked up the book I had planned on, the first volume in the Library of America's selections from Emerson's journals. I went to the upstairs cash register to pay for it. A manager at one of the customer service computers said, "It'll be a few minutes." I said, "Okay," laid the book down, and left. I got into the movie theater just after the previews had started.

After the movie I went to Barny Noble's. Inspired by the movie I picked up a mass-market paperback of The Girl Who Played with Fire (I expect this touchstone not to work). I hope to start reading it tonight -- talk about a heroine one can get behind!

The advantage of browsing in a brick and mortar store led to Guilt About the Past's leaping into my hands. I had never heard of it. It looked important. To my surprise 27 of us already own it.

The cashier was tending to a very small girl and told her he'd wait as she went off to do something she had forgotten. Seeing me step into line, he asked another employee to open her cash register, and I was out of there without delay.

My 40% coupon will likely expire unused.

Robert

PS Curse the touchstones.

R

So I went to see the high definition broadcast of the opera Armida and stopped at a different Borders on the way home. I got Ralph Waldo Emerson: Selected Journals 1820-1842 (Library of America) which is how LibraryThing lists it, but there is no touchstone. I got to use my 40% off coupon. I will have to look elsewhere for the second volume.

Robert

Shoot, I forgot about Armida until it was over. How was it?

Long and showy. If you get to see the rerun, it is worth the time, I think, but if the President invites you to the White House for dinner, go there instead.

Robert

Oopsy, just did a little Amazon order... Well, the shop went a bit bonkers again so I thought I'd treat myself! On the way after the Bank Holiday, fingers crossed: Charlaine Harris's next three Southern Vampire Mysteries, Dead as a Doornail, Definitely Dead and All Together Dead, and two Robin McKinleys, Spindle's End and Beauty. A nice fun little haul to sink my teeth into (sorry, sorry!).

Got a bunch of good hardcovers at a church $5 a bag booksale, including Collected Works by Jane Austen, The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes, Corelli's Mandolin, A Confederacy of Dunces and A Voyage Long and Strange.

Hehe Ellie.. should I be taking the blame for the two Mckinleys? :P

I bought 5 more books over the weekend (when in oxford... raid the bookstores)
Got:
Looking for Alaska - John Green
Becoming Bindy Mackenzie - Jaclyn Moriarty
The Owl Killers - Karen Maitland
The Taste of Sorrow - Jude Morgan
and.. The Return: Shadow Souls by L.J. Smith (I *need* to own all her books!)

Why, yes Rachel, as a matter of fact you should. Your reading of Spindle's End coupled with all that fairytale talk, my earlier reading of McKinley this year AND the fact that Beauty was already on my radar, made me buy them. And since you were the host of the thread responsible for this expenditure, and it was you who gave that final little push into 'oh-go-on-then' territory - yes, it's your fault. ;-)

I picked up The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostove on Saturday thanks to a 40% discount coupon from Borders

My first batch of May books.

Ghosts & Echoes by Lyn Benedict, Urban Fantasy

Book 2 in the Shadows Inquires series. Author is Lane Robins who wrote one of my favorite books Maledicte.

Victorious by Jack Campbell, Military SF

Last book in The Lost Fleet series.

Teeth of Beasts by Marcus Pelegrimas, Urban Fantasy

Book 3 of Skinners .

Spooky Little Girl by Laurie Notaro, Fiction/Urban Fantasy

Saw this on LT ER. Didn't request it, but bought it when it came out. About a woman who dies and comes back as a ghost.

Give Me Back My Legions by Harry Turtledove, Historical Fiction

Had to have it. Can still hear Augustus yelling 'Give Me Back My Eagles'. from the I, Claudius TV series.

Ardeur by Leah Wilson, Non-Fiction

14 writers on the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Series . Who knows why, its become such crap.

Cecilia by Linda Ferri, Historical Fiction

Story about persecution of Christians in Roman Empire.

Express Lane Meals by Rachel Ray, Cookbook

Impulse buy. Thought it would have more on the pantry.