What books came into your home today? - September 2007

Time for a new thread!

I now have a couple of Booker Prize winners:
- Hotel du Lac (1984), from a local used bookshop
- The Line of Beauty (2004), from Paperbackswap

From the library, I got Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, The Yearling by Marjorie Rawlings and Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote. And from PaperBackSwap, I got Perryville: This Great Havoc of Battle by Kenneth Noe, who was my thesis advisor in grad school.

Quite a mix!

And uncooperative touchstones...not one is working! I will come back and edit.

From the university library I picked up On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan and Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro.

From the second hand bookshop I picked up:
Drowning Ruth by Christina Schwartz
Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Adichie
The bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad
and Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg.

My 1st edition of Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets just got here today. I'm seriously going to kill my bank account on completing my set. Thats what i get for boycotting the series at first.

I went to Half Price Books to get the books for my daughter's reading list and ended up with almost as many books of my own.

Antigone by Jean Anouilh, Hamlet, The Lovely Bones, and The Death of Vishnu. Only the last is a new to me. Not very happy reads, eh?

I borrowed a few from my mum -
we need to talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver
the memory keeper's daughter by Kim Edwards
hawkes harbour by SE Hinton

and I bought a couple of Philip K Dick's too
a scanner darkly and do androids dream of electric sheep

I went to St Vinnies again and found The Untouchable by John Banville, Lambs of God by Marele Day and a Tim Winton, Lockie Leonard, Legend.

>6 sunnycat: sunnycat - lucky you've got such a generous mum!

First buys for September, from the 28th Manila International Book Fair:

M is for Magic, by Neil Gaiman
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami
The Elephant Vanishes, by Haruki Murakami

I bought myself the 1921 Cumann Sean-eolais na h-Eireann edition of George Moore's Heloise and Abelard for my birthday recently. This edition was privately printed in a lot of 1500 two-volume sets for subscribers only and is signed by the author.

Despite their age, the volumes I bought are in excellent condition, include their original wraps and some of their lovely, heavy deckle-edged pages are still uncut. I loved this novel when a teen, so I'm thrilled to own these now!

7judylou - don't worry, she borrows more books from me than I do from her.

I'm in London for a two week vacation, and picked up these books from Foyles Bookshop and Blackwell, both on Charing Cross Road in Soho. Two of the books are from the Man Booker Prize longlist.

1. The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng
2. Starbook by Ben Okri
3. Darkmans by Nicola Barker
4. The Child in Time by Ian McEwan

My daughter and I went to the library and the bookstore this morning.

borrowed from the library:
My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George
The Quiltmaker's Gift

bought at the bookstore:
Puff the Magic Dragon picture book w/ CD
Where's the Dragon?

Haven't started reading them yet, but I picked up four yesterday. I had the urge to use part of my day off to visit a couple of used book stores.

Herewith the haul:

Love affair--a Venetian journal, by Wright Morris (not William, despite that silly touchstone)
Dictionary of Italian cuisine, by Maureen B. Fant and Howard M. Isaacs
The honest courtesan, by Margaret F. Rosenthal
Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino

And if you think you see a thread here, you're right, though it was entirely unplanned!

Sept 4 - from bookmooch

Comm Check...: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia
The Star Trek Interview Book
Make It So (Star Trek: The Next Generation)
The Klingon Way: A Warrior's Guide (Star Trek: The Klingon Book of Virtues)

A bonanza in the mail today:

Chocolat, requested from a fellow LT member's Paperbackswap bookshelf!
The True History of the Kelly Gang, also from PBS
The Reluctant Fundamentalist, directly from another LT member.

I love LT and PBS! Woo hoo!

Good day for books! From the library, I brought home a children's book, The Boy Who Saved Cleveland by James Cross Giblin, two teen novels, The Ranger's Apprentice by John Flanagan and Evolution, Me & Other Freaks of Nature by Robin Brande, and a nonfiction book, Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon.

And, the mail was good to me. I received six Advanced Readers Copies today. They are, Bones to Ashes by Kathy Reichs, Fifty-Seven Heaven by Lonnie Cruse, Red Mandarin Dress by Qiu Xiaolong, Fresh Kills by Reggie Nadelson, Without Warning by Eugenia Lovett West, and Black Dove by Steve Hockensmith.

Woo Hoo!

From a fellow LTer I received in the mail Astrid and Veronika by Linda Olsson.

Received the following yesterday from an online seller:

The Secret Books of Venus I and II, by Tanith Lee
A Bed of Earth, by Tanith Lee
Murder of Angels, by Caitlin R. Kiernan

Just posted this to the August thread...duh.
Value Village was half off everything yesterday - I went to drop off junk but of course had to check for books - the shelves were really picked over. I did get Stolen Continents by Ronald Wright and Howards End by E.M. Forster.

Costco seems a strange place to be buying books, but there it is. Today I bought The Road and The Rug Merchant, both on recommendation by LTers.

My TBR pile is enormous. Three books came in at the library today. Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, The Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind by Bruce Watson, Life on the Refrigerator Door by Alice Kuipers, and The Girl with Braided Hair by Margaret Coel.

These all came today in the mail from Amazon:

Orlando Furioso by Ariosto
Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey? (A Choose Your Own Adventure Book)
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
The Sorrows of the Young Werther by Goethe

I love Amazon package days!

#20-emaestra- i love buying books at costco because they're usually a lot cheaper than at regular bookstores including barnes and noble

I recieved my "used" books that I ordered from Barnes & Noble's website yesterday:

Love is a Dog from Hell by Charles Bukowski

and

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

From Barnes & Noble: Songs Without Words by Anne Packer, Bliss, The Faraday Girls by Monica McInerney. Now I'm debating on going back to get The Reincarnationist by M.J. Rose. Oh so many books, so little money!

Yesterday I got In Cold Blood by Truman Capote and Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman.

Sept 6

Challengers

via PBS:

Realms of Mystery - one of the Forgotten Realms anthologies. I'm slowly trying to collect them all.

I got books from the library! Go me! Although only because they're out of print. I probably would have Amazon wishlisted them otherwise. Hmm.

Anyway:
Under the Yoke, by Ivan Vazov, for some Bulgarian reading (because I went there last summer and feel I should have read something from there!) and
The Peasants by Wladyslaw Reymont, because I asked a (Polish) friend at work for some recommendations for Polish literature.

I posted these two a few weeks ago when I got them from the library, but life caught up with me and I haven't had time to read them. And today my own copies came from Amazon: Divisadero and After Dark. At this rate, I might have to live to 140 to read everything I already have.

#22 scaifea, after you read Orlando Furioso, you might want to try Small World by David Lodge. It's a parody of OF set in an academic conference (remarkably similar to the Modern Language Association's annual convention).

#31 I keep telling myself that I won't have to spend money buying books once I retire, considering all the stacks, shelves, and bags of unread books fillling up my house.

I received two books today from an LT friend:
Gifted (passing along her early reviewers copy), and Stolen Lives.

My TBR has been mostly "virtual" for a while but now my stacks are starting to grow...

#32 Cariola: Small World sounds amazing! But if I wait until I'm finished with OF, it will be a very long time before I can read it. A group of my friends and I get together once a week and try to muddle through sight-reading OF in the Italian, and since only a couple of us actually know Italian (and I'm *so* not one of them!), it's pretty slow-going, but really fun - we laugh at each other (and the story, which is fantastic on so many levels) a lot. I bought the English translation so I could go back every week and read in English what we've tried to translate for that week, but reading ahead is strictly forbidden (as is trying to prepare before the sessions)!

Bookmooch is wonderful: Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen (I love the film of this, so I'm interested to read the book), Annapurna: A woman's Place by Arlene Blum, cos I'm trekking around Annapurna soon (sooo excited!) and It's not about the bike, by Lance Armstrong, because elite athletes are amazing.

All non-fiction, which is unusual for me!

#35 Well, no reason you can't read Small World along with Orlanda Furioso. I actually read the book after studying OF in a grad seminar; it was recommended by the prof. The book grabbed me immediately when I read that the main character won a prize for his dissertation on "The Influence of T.S. Eliot on Shakespeare." I need to reread both books as my memory of them is dim. I recall that the hot, mysterious chick at the conference was named Angelica (like the OF character).

I'm impressed that you're reading it in Italian. I learned just enough to pass a lower level exam and haven't used it since.

#37: My Italian is nearly non-existent. What generally ends up happening is that someone else who knows Italian will sort of translate it into Latin for me word by word, then I translate the Latin....it's strange but a lot of fun - there's more laughing than actual translating.

hmm, rereading what I just wrote makes me think that my life isn't like other people's...

I rarely buy books anymore, but they still manage to sneak into the house via the library or Paperbackswap. And my TBR is approaching 700 books....eeeek!

So far in September, these have arrived in the house:

From the library:

Snake Agent by Liz Williams
Concrete Desert by Jon Talton
Alpine For You by Maddy Hunter

From Paperbackswap so far in Sept:

Written in Blood by Caroline Graham
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
Pig Island by Mo Hayder
Still Life by Louise Penny
Murder Carries a Torch by Anne George

Oops, had to edit, as the mailman just came with this one, also from PBS:
The Harsh Cry of the Heron by Lian Hearn

Cheryl

From Amazon.com
The winds of changeby Eugene Linden,
which discusses climate change through history &
The Secret of Hurricanes by Theresa Williams, a LT author.

From my sister-in-law's giveaway box:

A Beautiful Mind : a biography of John Forbes Nash, Jr by Sylvia Nasar
The Rice Mother by Rani Manicka
Mrs. Einstein by Anna McGrail

I was unable to resist the Bromeliad trilogy by Terry Pratchett, which I got at 50% off:

Truckers
Diggers
Wings

Sept 8

Learner-Centered Astronomy Teaching: Strategies for ASTRO 101
The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks Goes Hollywood

Went to buy an Aikido book for one of my former students but the one I wanted was not on the shelf. Came home instead with

The Giver by Lois Lowry
Icelander by Dustin Long
St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell

and from the "3 for $2" table:
A People's History of the United States 1492-Present by Howard Zinn
The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie
The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde

Must...resist...reading...some of these...right now....

I scored 2 booker prize winners on sale
the famished road by ben okri and
the true history of the kelly gang by peter carey

I seem to be making a habit of dropping in to the opp shop on Monday mornings. Today I got Peter Carey's The Tax Inspector, Tim Flannery's The Future Eaters and Fast Women by Jennifer Cruise.

This weekend, I brought home 80 books from the Friends of the Simsbury (CT) Library book sale.

I found Five Quarters of the Orange at a Habitate for Humanity Store.

#47 sisaruus,

Darn it but I completely forgot the Simsbury book sale was this past weekend and I don't live too far away in CT. But by what you've purchased, looks like there may not have been any books left (LOL). 80 books wow that is a big bunch of books. I hope you got great bargains. I will have to try to remember this for next year.

On the weekend I went to a large community garage sale and got the following (also some great earrings, a pizza cutter and some Royal Doulton cups and saucers for $1!)

Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen - 1st Ed. with dust jacket
Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson
The Lost Continent by Bill Bryson
Three Junes by Julia Glass
Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde
(he's been mentioned on here a lot, so thought I'd give him a try)
The Gates of Ivory by Margaret Drabble
The Ethical Canary by Margaret Somerville
Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles by Margaret George
The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes
The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi by Jacqueline Park
Wideacre by Philippa Gregory
Perfect Love by Elizabeth Buchan
No Great Mischief by Alistair Macleod
City of Dreams by Beverly Swerling

also picked up a few that have been Mooched away.

Amazon box smiling at the mail box with Last Harvest : How a cornfield became New Daleville by Witold Rybczynski, because I just love the way he writes; Paddy on the Hardwood by Rus Bradburd, because I heard an interesting interview with him on PBS and I'm planning a trip to Ireland next year; and To kill the Irishman by Rick Porello, because it's about Cleveland when I lived there.

Sept 10

From bookmooch

Touch the top of the world
Revolution at Berkeley
Own your own corporation : why the rich own their own companies and everyone else works for them

From PBS

Adventuring in Alaska (Sierra Club Adventure Travel Guides)
The Russians
Russia: Broken Idols, Solemn Dreams
Stop Paddling & Start Rocking the Boat: Business Lessons from the School of Hard Knocks

From PBS

Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card

Where do you find the PBS books? I've seen many references on LT but only see DVDs at PBS.org.

#54 They mean Paperback Book Swap, not Public Broadcasting. :)

Ha ha ha ha ha -- thanks, that makes sense!!!

From the amazon marketplace I received Colin's Conquest by Lisa Rene Smith. I've been eyeing this book for about 6 months and finally decided to get a copy. The weird thing is now I can't remember how I originally heard about the book.

#54 teelgee: Ha Ha! I was wondering the same thing - thanks for asking for the both of us!

I just bought Clerkenwell Tales by Peter Ackroyd. I also got Philosophy 101 by Stanley Rosen.

Clerkenwell Tales was a short book and an easy read. The author tried hard to give an accurate picture of the historical time of which it was written. Philosophy 101 is much bigger and will be much slower and more difficult to read. I have started it but I will not be finishing it quickly.

Ooops. My not buying books for the month thing just vanished... ho hum :-)

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
Porterhouse Blue by Tom Sharpe (I'm only going into my fourth year at Cambridge. I really should have read this by now!)
The Three Musketeers, translated by Richard Pevear. I'm deeply excited about this as I was totally unimpressed by the other translation I have (leaving sex scenes out, I don't know!)
Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa (I thought I'd try this author out. Though the print size is terrifyingly tiny in this edition - I think I'll be wearing the glasses!)
The Summer Book by Tove Jansson, partly because I used to love the Moomin books!

All this was because I was searching for the Nepali embassy, got lost and on the way found this really nice little bookshop tucked away in a corner. I thought I would reward myself for managing to get to the embassy without losing passports or money or anything. It was a slightly stressful morning!

ETA: Oooh, the husband just came home with Samarkand by Amin Maalouf. I'm planning on reading it while visiting Samarkand next week!

From Ebay Eagle in the Snow by Wallace Breem because so many LTers raved about it.

From PBS

The Huddled Masses : The Immigrant in American Society, 1880-1921
Through the Glass Wall: A Therapist's Lifelong Journey to Reach the Children of Autism

No touchstones are working today apparently

From BookMooch:

Language Visible: Unraveling the Mystery of the Alphabet from A to Z

From an Amazon gift certificate:

Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres
When the Trees Say Nothing : Writings on Nature by Thomas Merton
At Large and At Small by Anne Fadiman
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

Oh joy joy joy!!!

I found out today, a month after school started, that I will be teaching freshman come Monday. I will be teaching mythology (haven't seen it in about 25 years) and The Odyssey (last read 15 years ago). I went to the used bookstore hoping to find something useful. As always, Cliffs Notes on Mythology fits the bill, as well as Greek Myths Western Style.

To console myself, I hit the clearance rack and got Time Traveler's Wife, In Her Shoes, and The Hundred Secret Senses.

It by Stephen King
Middlesex By Jeffrey Eugenides
The Regulators by Richard Bachman (Stephen King)
Desperation by Stephen King
James and the Giant Peach By Roald Dahl
Red Dragon By Thomas Harris

I work at a used bookstore, it comes in handy

Just got from Amazon.com
A Midsummer Night's Scream: A Jane Jeffry Mystery
The Ghost and Mrs. McClure
The Unforgiven
Married to a Stranger: A novel

and the one I've been waiting for to come out:
The Star Garden: A Novel Of Sarah Agnes Prine

A stop at the 2nd. hand bookstore yielded
Le Divorce Diane Johnson
Waiting Ha Jin
Trouble Fay Weldon
Hunting Badger Tony Hillerman
Atonement Ian McEwan
An imaginative experience Mary Wesley
Dance Hall of the dead Tony Hillerman

Just brought home Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, which isn't loading, and Stardust by Neil Gaiman. I've been waiting for them to come in at the library, but now that they have I have too many things to read at once! Oh well. Once you're reading 7 or 8 books at once, what's a couple more?

I've decided that I can't buy anymore books until I get through all of these in my TBR stack. But I just received: The Most of P.G. Wodehouse.

Just picked up Fortune Like the Moon by Alys Clare from the post office. It arrived either Friday or Saturday but I didn't make it to check mail until today.

From the library:
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse -- maybe I'll finish it this time!
and Fair and Balanced, My Ass! An Unbridled Look at the Bizarre Reality of Fox News (touchstone wonky) by Joseph Minton Amann

Did some book shopping last week and came out with some books I've been Dying to own:
Beowulf
The Illiad & The Odyssey by Homer
The Time Machine and The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
The Complete Worls of Lewis Carroll

I spotted The Lambs of London by Peter Ackroyd today in the library and took it out. Hmmm I read the first few pages on the bus on the way home and the initial opening scene and writing style didn't scream at me to keep reading. I hope I will like it.

#75 The Lambs of London gets better . . . then it falls off again. But definitely worth the time overall.

It was a good day. I borrowed one book from the library and bought one book (and a set of DVDs) from Borders. The borrowed book is Dragon Lovers, short fantasy involving, you know, dragons, by Jo Beverley, Mary Jo Putney, Karen Harbaugh, and Barbara Samuel.

From the bookstore, I picked up The History and Conquests of Ancient Rome, which I bought simply because I liked the pictures ~ many of them are of things and places I saw when I visited Rome a few years ago. (The DVD is "Dexter, the first season," which I've been wanting to buy but haven't because of the price but then I got a coupon for 40% off and...I have no willpower sometimes.)

For the low, low price of 50 cents I bought Mostly Harmless, Deadeye Dick, Timequake, and Encyclopedia Brown solves them all (the last one was a nostalgia purchase.
(touchstones are wonky)

Just received a swap copy of Susan Straight's A Million Nightingales.

Just took a break, walked over to Powell's City of Books and bought:
Song of the Crow by Layne Maheu (this one just jumped - or flew - off the shelf into my hands)

and

Wishcraft by Barbara Sher - in preparation for my retirement in a year!

from Amazon - Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself by Alan Alda.

In hardcover & on audio.

Just discovered that the library at the campus I work at has a great collection of fiction novels. I study at a different campus so I never even went into the library. Best thing is that the campus is way smaller than the one I study at so it's unlikely the books will be re-called by another student.

I picked up Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates
and On Beauty by Zadie Smith

Two more today from the library:

Full Moon Feast : Food and the Hunger for Connection by Jessica Prentice

and

Blessed Unrest : How the largest movement in the world came into being and why no one saw it coming by Paul Hawken (which has the longest Appendix I've ever seen-- almost as long as the main part of the book).

Dragonhaven by Robin McKinley and To Weave a Web of Magic which contains four works by Claire Delacroix, Lynn Kurland, Patricia McKillip, and Sharon Shinn

Yesterday, I picked up Goodwill's 50 More Horror Stories, selected by Al Sarrantonio and Martin H. Greenberg, in a sale bin. I'm glad to have found this to pair with the first collection I got a couple of years ago.

I just got an Amazon delivery of Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. Murakami writes the only magical realism that I can stand.

I gave up trying to find it on my own, so finally broke down and ordered Benazir Bhutto's autobiography Daughter of Destiny from AbeBooks.

At a charity store on the way back from getting groceries:
Istanbul: Memories of a City by Orhan Pamuk
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco

#86 careyi: Oooh, I *love* Kafka on the Shore. It particularly appeals to me (besides because of the lovely writing style) for the complex and very interesting ways that Murakami alludes to the Oedipus myth throughout (I'm a Classics prof, so go figure).

more than I can handle...embers, just got and started jane eyre, the eyre affair, how to read a book, picture of dorian gray, essentials of poe

Just back from a Border's stop:

The Accidental by Ali Smith
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Moshid Hamid
The Dowry Bride by Shoban Bantwal

And I received a book swap item in today's mail: Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe

September has been quite a good month for acqiuring books:

1. The Dumas Club by Arturo Pereze-Reverte (Green Metropolis)
2. East of Eden by John Steinbeck (Green Metropolis)
3. Dying Light by Stuart MacBride (signed hardback from Green Metropolis)
4. The Messenger by Andrew E Shipley (TCM - for review)
5. Dracula Cha Cha Cha by Kim Newman (The Works)
6. The Sooterkin by Tom Gilling (The Works)
7. Stuck in Neutral by Terry Trueman (The Works)

Also on their way:
1. The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith (Book Mooch)
2. Orlando by Virginia Woolf (Book Mooch)
3. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (Green Metropolis)
4. I, Claudius by Robert Graves (Green Metropolis)
5. A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon (Green Metropolis)

From the library I just took out Ask the Parrot by Richard Stark, Under Orders by Dick Francis and The Space Opera Renaissance.

Still reading other things but hope to get to these Real Soon Now.

It seems I can't even go to the grocery store without coming home with books - Grave Secrets and Break No Bones, both by Kathy Reichs.

Recent visit to Value Village netted:
Vida by Madge Piercy
Night of Rain and Stars by Maeve Binchy
Missing Joseph by Elizabeth George
The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd
and The Untouchable by John Banville

Also from the library God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens

Received in the mail this week: The Rest of Her Life by Laura Moriarty, I, Elizabeth by Rosalind Miles and Songs Without Words by Ann Packer. Planning to see Ann Packer tomorrow at a booksigning in NYC... can't wait!

I haven't really kept up with this thread, but here's what I can remember:

* J. E. Neale's Queen Elizabeth, through Bookmooch.
* Alan Axelrod's Elizabeth I CEO, also through Bookmooch.
* Teach Yourself Visually Handspinning, a guidebook to my most recent other hobby
* Joseph J. Ellis's His Excellency: George Washington, from the local used book store this afternoon.

Edited for touchstones.

#86: careyi and #89: scaifea

I also loved Kafka on the Shore! Haruki Murakami is one of my favorite writers, and I just love his stories!

The charity shop above which we live does three paperbacks for a quid, which is fairly dangerous really. I've bought loads this month (stocking up for my maternity leave). They include:
The Girls by Lori Lansens,
The People's Act of Love by James Meek,
Libra by Don DeLillo and
Shade by Neil Jordan.

Totting it up, I think I've probably bought about a hundred or so this month, so that ought to keep me going for the rest of the year!

This month I bought

The road
The wind up bird chronicles
The body artist
White noise
July's people
Max and the cats

Today I had Word Myths in the mail. I've had it on my wishlist forever and now I can't wait to read it.

after several months of being good i bought two books today- eat love and pray-the new oprah selection and blaze by richard bachman aka stephen king

Since Saturday

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett - borrowed from a friend
Midnighters 3 by Scott Westerfeld - When I finished the second book, I promised myself I was not going to run out and buy this. Two days later, I bought it. See how much self-control I have?
The Body of David Hayes by Ridley Pearson - Bargain rack when I bought the Midnighters book.
A Death in Belmont by Sebastian Junger - BookMooch
The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman - BookMooch from an LT recommendation.

That's it so far

Edited to add a stop at Half Price Books resulted in
Middlesex
Stargirl
Feed
Pastwatch and
Heartsick
landing on my shelf as well. This is pathetic, and I am definitely an addict.

Over the course of yesterday and today, the following books have ended up on my TBR Mountain:

A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon
Les Miserables Vol. 1 & 2 by Victor Hugo
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence

Well, it's my birthday and if I want to spend my birthday money on books, that's my own affair, and hubby can't complain too loudly! ;)

#104: Happy Birthday, Kell_Smurthwaite!! Indeed, you deserve to splurge today!

I just got Money by Martin Amis and God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens. I'm reading the Christopher Hitchens one right now. It's all right. I'm learning a lot about religion, especially Islam.

My mom also just gave me A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway. I've only read a little by him and I don't think I like him very much. Lots of people I know feel that way. This book of his should be a bit different though, it's nonfiction, essays about Paris and about people he met and things (or at least I think so from reading the back).

I just bought The Great Masters a very large book on art. It looks very good.

The Touchstones are not working. When I put this book in Touchstones I got back Wuthering Heights which seems very odd.

I love Half-Price Books. On recommendation from LTers, Lamb: the gospel according to Biff, Christ's childhood pal, The Last Picture Show, and Malinche. I also got a first edition of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter for $5. SCORE!

Half-Price Books is indeed a place of wonders. (Did you know that if you're a teacher of any kind, you can get an additional 20% off all purchases there?)

Anyway, the books I got this week weren't from Half-Price, they came in the mail from Amazon:

Inequality Reexamined by Amartya Sen
Moral Principles and Political Obligations by A. John Simmons

I'm already almost finished with the Simmons book, since I've had a library copy for close to a month now. The Sen I suspect I won't begin for another couple of weeks.

ETA: Happy birthday, Kell. Seems to me you can buy as many books as you want on your day ;)

O, yes, lucky you. I am so envious. I love the older books with those thought-about pages, the deckle- edged pages.

From the library:

The Sense of Wonder by Rachel Carson

and the address series!

84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith (audio)

Yesterday, technically, but:

Blood Red, Sister Rose by Thomas Keneally which is about Joan of Arc and looks fascinating;

The Death of the King's Canary by Dylan Thomas which apparently couldn't be published during his lifetime since the satire of his contemporaries was so scathing;

Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley which I'm looking forward to, as it looks to be rather good

and

Mrs. Eckdorf in O'Neil's Hotel by William Trevor

I came home last night to an Amazon box full of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die (to add to my list obsession) and Small World by David Lodge (an LT recommendation that I'm extremely excited about!)

This morning I took delivery of Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. :)

Went to Borders and couldn't resist picking up Jane Austen's Lady Susan, The Watsons and Sandition and Persuasion and Henry James' Daisy Miller.

#104 Kell_Smurthwaite Happy Birthday! Great books your chose!! Enjoy.

I purchased cause I had coupons for both and since they are across the street from each other Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo at B&N and Run by Ann Patchett at Borders. But of course while there I saw Soul Catcher by Michael White and will have to wait for my Borders bucks next week to buy that one! Oh so many books so little money!!

As a young cook, my mind has been racing, looking for inspiration beyond my local culinary experience. I picked up A Cook's Tour, by Anthony Bourdain, and Heat by Bill Buford.

Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky, The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke, Unruly Times by A. S. Byatt, Empress Orchid by Anchee Min and The View from Castle Rock by Alice Munro.

I bought, on Amazon.fr, books for my son ans for me as well :Un marriage amateur by Ann Tyler, Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster... I am in a hurry to receive them.

>106 careyi::careyi
Definitely give A Moveable Feast a chance. I've read a decent amount of Hemingway and that is my favorite book of his. It's very different from his other work because it's nonfiction. You'll have to let me know what you think.
Happy Birthday Kell_Smurthwaite!!! Go book crazy!

I finished reading "Tourist Season" by Carl Hiassen and am now reading "Running With The Bulls; My Years With the Hemingways" by Valerie Hemmingway. She met Ernest Hemingway by doing an interview with him for an Irish newspaper that she worked for in the 1950's, then he invited her to join his family as a secretary/assistant. She travelled all over the world with them, and ended up marrying Ernest's son. I don't really care to read Hemingway - but I enjoy reading ABOUT him. I toured his home in Key West, FL this April, and found him an interesting man with a pretty fascinating life.

#113 scaifea, be sure to let us know what you think of Small World. It has been quite a few years since I read it as a grad student, but it was so clever. You're the person who was reading Orlando Furioso, right?

>121 iamdlmlover:: iamdlmlover

I really enjoy reading about him too. Have you read Papa Hemingway? I thought it was really fascinating.

I, Claudius by Robert Graves (from Green Metropolis)
The Olive Readers by Christine Aziz (£1 from Asda)
Recipes for a Perfect Marriage by Morag Prunty (£1 from Asda)

I just can't resist a bargain!

Went and turned in a part-time application at Borders (a dangerous move in my part!) and couldn't resist buying 2 books from the 1001 list. I got The Awakening by Kate Chopin and A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. Sucker!!!!! LOL

raggedtig you have done what I keep toying with doing--applying at either B&N or Borders to work part time and get their discounts. Only problem I'm afraid for me would be--the paycheck never leaving the store. I hope you get hired.

Stopped at Goodwill before class today and for $10 acquired A Wrinkle In Time, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, The Discomfort Zone, Freakonomics, and 1906. I love used books!

I'm a bit addicted to buying books atm. Today I got:
1985 by Anthony Burgess, Daddy was a Number Runner by Louise Meriwether, Sophie's Choice by William Styron and The Saddlebag by Bahiyyih Nakhjavani. Cost me £10 all told from the wonderful Copperfields in Wimbledon.

>125 raggedtig: raggedtig
I've got my fingers crossed for you. I've got my eye on a Library Assistant job at one of the Universities here.

And today Bookmooches Stuart: a life Backwards, by Alexander Masters and Family Matters, by Rohinton Mistry arrived.
I Mooched Stuart... after watching the TV version, and Family Matters, as it is part of the 1,001 books you must read before you die.

Well, I started reading Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer at the bookstore and did something I've never done (at a bookstore, anyway) - spilled my drink. I got hot chocolate all over the table, the floor, my clothes, and the book. I had not intended to buy it. Well, it's mine now.

I also bought a paperback copy of Sunshine by Robin McKinley, since my hardback copy is getting a little bit worn and I don't want it to get any more so, Accelerando by Charles Stross, and Blood Price by Tanya Huff. I had intended to read a bit of the last two first to see if I really wanted them, but after spilling the drink and possibly splashing it on them - I couldn't tell for sure - I decided not to take the chance and to just buy them all. Luckily with the B&N membership it was only about $35 for all four.

Bought today at a library book sale:

Communion by Whitley Strieber
The Dark by James Herbert
The Constant Princess by Phillipa Gregory
She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Regina's Song by David Eddings
The Wayfarer Redemption by Sara Douglass
Faerie Tale by Raymond E. Fiest
Bluebeard's Egg by Margaret Atwood

And books for the baby due in the Spring:

Town Mouse Country Mouse by Carol Jones
Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear
Disney's Pocahontas
Disney's Sleeping Beauty

All for $13.00!

Today I picked up The Man Who Cast Two Shadows by Carol O'Connell and Retribution by Jilliane Hoffman (want to reread this).

Thanks to all the well-wishers on my part-time adventures in Borders. So far, no bite. #131 ladybookworm, I also have She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb. In fact it's 2 books away from being read. I'm currently reading The Best Laid Plans by Sidney Sheldon and then it's onto Animal Farm to knock out another one of the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. I've heard a lot of good reviews so I'm anxious to find out about it.

Yesterday I was in the train station and had extra money so I bought Operation Shylock by Philip Roth. New York Magazine just did this ranking of Philip Roth's books and Operation Shylock was at the top so it should be good. My mom also just gave me On the Road by Jack Kerouac. She told me it's best to read it at my age or else you just roll your eyes.

Today Amazon delivered Tales, by H. P. Lovecraft, You can write a mystery, by Gillian Roberts, and The User Book Lover's Guide to New England. A book of fiction, a book on writing fiction, and a book on finding more fiction to read.

Just returned from a library sale with $8 worth of books, including: The Red Badge of Courage, The World According to Garp, David Copperfield, A Year in Provence, Lost in Translation, Speaking of Journals, Post Capitalist Society, The Great Railway Bazaar, Author, Author, Foe, Necessary Fictions, and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. Whew!

Wow, $8. You got a good deal with those books.

Library sales are my favorite. The books are used, but typically only gently, and everything is such an amazing deal. Not to mention the fact that they support a good cause!

I got 3 mooches over the last coupla days -- A Taste for Murder by Claudia Bishop, Go Ask Alice, and The Ghost Road by Pat Barker. LOVE getting books in the mail. 8-)

Library sale, day 2 (bag day): 33 books for $2. I won't list them all here, but I will say that my favorite one is a 1951 hardcover version of Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady, if for no other reason than the fact that it lays open by itself, no matter what page you open it to. Mmm, easy reading!

#3 kiwiflowa - I loved Fried Green Tomatoes. I haven't read any other Fannie Flagg, have you?

Bought a copy of I Love You, Too by Laura Cunningham at the Sam French store in Studio City to replace a lost copy.

33 books for $2

I'm salivating. Seriously.

#122 Cariola: Yep, I and my group are still slogging through Orlando Furioso (we call ourselves the Ariostoi). I can't wait to start Small World, and I'll definitely fill you in when I finish it...

A swap copy of Tipperary. The LT reviewers weren't all that kind, but I'm a sucker for Irish historical fiction.

Today in the mail came I Served the King of England. Yesterday brought Love Is A Mix Tape. Now the top of my long shelves is completely full of books to be read.