Tag Archives: new

Incoming Titles: Update

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The lovely FoL group had a half-price book sale a weekend or two ago, and who am I to turn down such a kind invitation to see what new titles I could find? So, I went and I found. 🙂

I really tried to stay on target and not fill up my shopping bag (since the December FoL Book Sale was still so recent), but I did find one or two titles to fit my needs!

Bottom to Top:

  • The Not so Big House – Susanka (really good interior decorating/design book).
  • Turtle Diary – Russell Hoban (1975) – epistolary novel that I saw somewhere that looked good and the library didn’t have its own copy. ETA: Read. Post to come.
  • Olive Kitteredge – Elizabeth Strout (2008) – the first novel introducing an interesting character – there’s been a recent release of a follow-up title, but since I couldn’t remember the original story, thought I’d better reread this before picking up that new one!
  • Bettyville: A Memoir – George Hodgman (2015, NF/auto).

And then I had briefly mentioned that quick visit to the bookshop on Venice Beach but didn’t give the deets on the title that I bought there? Here it is: Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo (2019)… I’ve heard a lot about it from the British bloggers and I was waiting for it to come out in paperback. Very looking forward to that read!

ETA: I’m already reading the Evaristo book. Wow. It’s good. Here’s my review.

New (to me) books…

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There happened to be a FoL library book sale at the start of last month, and who am I to turn down that deliciousness? So, of course, I went. “Just to see…” 🙂

So, here are the titles that I carried home with me (from top to bottom):

  • Germinal – Emile Zola
  • The House of the Four Winds – John Buchan
  • Shopping, Seduction and Mr. Selfridge – Lindy Woodhead
  • Fodor’s Vancouver and Victoria guide book
  • The Trumpet of the Swan – E.B. White
  • Stuart Little – E.B. White
  • The Great Typo Hunt – Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson
  • Death in the Summer – William Trevor

Nearly all fiction titles (which is not my usual MO), but this was probably influenced by my glancing at my already-existing TBR NF shelves and realizing that I already have enough on those!

(Plus this pile did give me the impetus to go through my TBR and whittle down its numbers quite a bit. (Two large grocery bags of books to the FoL!)

Plus, I finally bit the bullet and gave away my large pile of dark-green Virago titles.

I know – sacrilege, but I realized that if I haven’t read these titles over the past 20 years, I probably don’t really want to read them at all. Now they are available to more appreciative readers!)

Now, I just have to read them! Hahahahahahaha.

New Books…

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The FoL summer book sale was held the other day, and although I tried to not go, I did end up spending some time there. (Well, to not go would have been so rude, don’t you think?)

And so this is what I ended up with in my shopping bag, all ready for a future summer’s day. Uncertain which summer it will be, but I’m ready!  ðŸ™‚

Top to bottom:

  • Snow Angels – Stewart O’Nan (usually good fiction writer)
  • The Last Picture Show – Larry McMurtry (fiction set in Texas. I first read this in my first semester at American university and hadn’t been in Texas long enough to get the references. I think now that I’ve been here a while, I will appreciate it more.)
  • The Best American Short Stories (1999) – edited by Amy Tan (F) (current slight craze on short stories)
  • Tinkerbelle – Robert Manry (NF travel – guy has never sailed before, but buys a boat and sails across the Atlantic with many adventures…)
  • Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison (F and African-American classic which I haven’t read but with the new focus on reading more POC will do so soon)
  • Bailey’s Cafe – Gloria Naylor (F) (see above about the focus on reading more POC authors)
  • Advertising in America – (NF) big coffee book with some lovely color plates of old advertising from across the USA

And going against my usual grain of not-reading-things-I’ve-just-bought, I’ve just finished a good read of the Naylor fiction. Loved it so expect more to come about that.

So hmm…. What’s next?

New books on the door step…

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Although I may have (temporarily) less time to devote to reading at the mo, I’ve allowed a trickle of new titles into the house. In the above photo are the most recent titles that I’ve acquired (some from the generosity of book publishers noted where applicable). Bottom to top:

  • Vanishing – Gerard Woodward (ARC) (F) I adored Woodward’s earlier work August (see review) and I have high hopes for this one.
  • That’s not English: Britishisms, Americanisms, and What our English Says About Us – Erin Moore. NF about use of UK English compared with U.S. English. This has good reviews elsewhere and looks like a fun linguistic read.
  • Gideon’s Children – Howard G. Franklin (ARC) (F). Novel about idealistic men and women in Public Defender Offices in SoCal in the 1960’s.
  • Mindset: The New Psychology of Success – Carol Dweck (NF). I’m all about learning, learning, learnin’ new things and new ways, and this book supports that philosophy. My sister swears by it.
  • We Should All be Feminists – Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie (essay). This small book is adapted from Adichie’s very successful TEDx talk of the same time, and considers what feminism means today. I haven’t seen the talk, primarily as I’d like to read this written essay first. Should be lots of food for thought.

So, variety of new reads for the near future – how fun is that?

Never lend books — nobody ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are those which people have lent me.

Anatole France, novelist, essayist, Nobel laureate (16 Apr 1844-1924).