FoL Winter Sale Goodies…

We had the annual winter sale for our local FoL and as usual, there was an abundance of goodies for all… (I know. It’s not that I *needed* some new titles, but who am I to turn down unfettered access to tons of good new-to-me titles?)

So, let’s go through which titles made it through my marketing filter (with rather big holes!). At the top pic, from L-R (vertical titles):

• The Pottery Barn: Bathrooms (NF)
• The Pottery Barn: Living Rooms (NF)
• Workspace (another interior design book)

Moving to the horizontal pile, from the bottom up:

• When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals – Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and Susan McCarthy (NF)
• On Doctoring: Stories, Poems, Essays – John Stone and Richard Reynolds (eds.)
• Essays of E.B. White – E.B. White (love me some E.B.) (NF)
• The Rosie Effect – Grahame Simpson (F) – continuation from The Rosie Project
• The Barrytown Trilogy – Roddy Doyle (F)
• Old New York – Edith Wharton (F)
• All Things Bright and Beautiful – James Herriot (NF? F?)

And then this pile as well above (<smh>) bottom to top:

• “Dress Your Best” – Clinton Kelly and Stacy London (NF). ETA: Read. Meh.
• “What Not to Wear” – Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine (NF). ETA: Read. Meh.
• “If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home” – Lucy Worsley (NF – social history)
• “Lost Country Life” – Dorothy Harley (NF)
• “Days of Grace” – Arthur Ashe and Arnold Rampersad (autobio)
• “Great Tales of English History 2” – Robert Lacey (really interesting historian about UK history)
• “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African” – Allison, ed. (NF/bio) 1798
• “The Free People of Color of New Orleans” – Martha Gehman (NF/history)

And then this with the most gorgeous cover pic: “Living Earth” by DK Eye Witness (just love this series of books):

<rubs hands together with glee at glorious reading ahead>

Fun times. Total Nerd Fest, but fun.

You know how sometimes you have a weekend when it seems like you didn’t do much but you still had a lovely time? When you put all goals toward efficiency to one side in favor of doing not much? Well, last weekend was one of those. It was great. 🙂

Both the SuperHero and I had had a busy week, so by mutual agreement, we had no social plans and not much else on the books. Despite this, it was still a fab weekend for a variety of reasons. Plus – it rained. A lot. (Not very common for this semi-desert area and very conducive to hanging around at home.)

One of those reasons was that we went to see a matinee of the new Downton Abbey film… (Fun plus Alamo had put together a funny recap of the previous six seasons prior to the film).

Another one of those reasons was that it was the weekend of the big annual book sale at the FoL which, although I have no absolute need for any more titles, I went to. I typically take Friday afternoon off from work and go at that time to avoid the crowds but this year, thought I would take the risk of a Saturday attendance. 

(It wasn’t too bad in the end, but goodness gracious me: if there was one thing that I could change, I would make parents take better charge of their ill-behaved children: No, you can’t suddenly sit down on the floor in the middle of the aisle and read your book. No, you can’t run around screaming right now. Pro-point for bringing kids to the sale: the kids are being exposed to lots of books and the library itself. Anti-point for bringing kids to the sale: Think of the other people.) 

I ended up with a good stack of books, although heaven knows when they will get read (!): 

Non-Fiction titles: 

• Home – Ellen Degeneres [2015] – (coffee table/interior decorating/design and I like this sort of thing)
• The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat – Oliver Sacks [1985] – (sounded interesting)
• In Search of London – H.V. Morton [1950] – (loved Morton’s In Search of England)
• Journeys to the Past – David Attenborough [1981] – (true recollections of his animal days)
• One Writer’s Beginning – Eudora Welty  [1983] – (Actually thought this was another author entirely, so not sure about whether I’ll keep this one.) 

Fiction titles: 

• The Forgetting Room – Nick Bantock [1977] – (he who wrote the Griffin and Sabine books and I loved those)
• The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears – Dinaw Mengestu [2007] – (heard good things plus POC)
• Life after Life – Kate Atkinson [2013] (heard good things)
• Mama Day – Gloria Naylor [1988] – (love Bailey’s Café [1992] before plus POC)
• The Darling Buds of May – H.E. Bates [1958] – (classic and been on list awhile)
• A Death in the Family [1957] – James Agee (classic and been on list awhile)
• Angle of Repose – Wallace Stegner [1971] – (been wanting to reread this and no copy at library)
• Cancer Ward – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn [1968] – (ditto above except not a reread)
• Lost Horizon – James Hilton [1933] – (thought might be interesting and classic – also potential read for scary October)
• Something Wicked This Way Comes [1962] – Ray Bradbury (for scary October reading)

Plus – I was completely sucked in to Jigsaw Puzzle world with this one (from a rug design by Frank Lloyd Wright): 

Incoming…!

The capture from the 2018 FoL Fall Book Sale…

As tradition holds, I dropped by the annual FoL Book Sale last weekend and caught a few new (to me) titles to add to the TBR. (I know – this is just what it needs, but…. books….)

I ended up mostly in the NF side of the sale, and found these lovelies. It’s interesting that I didn’t go over to the F side, but there you go. I’m into NF these days, and F – I have plenty of those at home. (Except I do also have plenty of NF too, so not sure that reasoning would stand in a court of law. 🙂 Maybe I’ll just stay quiet on that issue!)

To the books (top to bottom in pic):

Bloody Confused – Chuck Culpepper (NF about an American sportswriter who travels to England to try to understand English football… Good reviews.)

Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions – Gloria Steinem.  (NF – essays.) Saw Steinem at a talk not long ago, and her fierce character was impressive.

Time and Again – Jack Finney (the only F that slipped through the goalie.) Time travel.

She Got up off the Couch and Other Heroic Acts from Mooreland, Indiana – Haven Kimmel (NF/bio.) I have read her earlier autobio of her childhood and growing up, and remember it as being hilarious. Hopefully, this title continues with that tradition!

Poems and Sketches of E.B. White – White is adorable and lovely and I have loved his essays…

The Promised Land – Nicholas Lemann (NF about the Great Migration of African-Americans post-Emancipation Proclamation).

Across China – Peter Jenkins (NF – travel book.) I’ve read his other two books about his walking journey across America, and I really enjoyed those.

Majesty: Elizabeth and the House of Windsor – Robert Lacey (NF – bio) I like reading about the Royals every now and then… Plus Lacey is interesting and has a dry sense of humor that slips in.

And then some Kindle titles seem to have sneaked in as well (although obvs not related to the book sale!):

All-American Murder: The Rise and Fall of Aaron Hernandez – James Patterson. (NF – sports). Woah. Does this belong to me, the person who has never watched a whole football game or followed it? Why, yes. I am curious about Hernandez’ story and how it went awry.

American Fire: Love, Arson and Life in a Vanishing Land – Monica Hesse. (NF.) Seen plenty of good reviews and I love learning about different parts of America, good and bad.

First Plays – A.A. Milne. (Drama.) I really enjoy reading plays sometimes…

Only Beautiful Please: A British Diplomat in North Korea – John Averard. (NF travel about a country which I find to be very curious).

The Power – Naomi Alderman. (F – spec fiction)

Queen Victoria – Giles Lytton Strachey (NF/bio. I loves me some Queen Victoria sometimes.)

And I also picked up a couple of jigsaw puzzles ready for winter. I’m like a squirrel hoarding all her nuts (except that I actually know where most of the nuts are buried). I read an article the other day about how squirrels bury hundreds of nuts in preparation for cold weather, but then they forget where they buried them! (Aww. Bless. Just like me.)

FOL Book Sale – Autumn 2017 Update: Nice Haul!

It was the annual book sale at the local library over the weekend, and, in the spirit of giving and community support, I had to go. (Maybe it was the books… You know how it is… )

I found some good titles, and without much more ado, here are the books:

• Some Nerve – Patty Chang Anker (NF)
• The Kingdom by the Sea – Paul Theroux (travel UK)
• I’m Down – Mishna Wolf (autobio) (NF)
• The Best American Short Stories 1997 – Annie Proulx (ed.) (F)
• The Best American Travel Writing 2001 – Paul Theroux (ed.) (NF)
• Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories – Annie Proulx (2004) (F)
• The Party that Lasted 100 Days: The Late Victorian Season – Hilary Evans, Mary Evans (1976) (NF)

What to choose, what to choose….

I ended up having to sort out my book shelves to make space for the new additions, and, in the process, giving back two big bags of books to the FOL to share the love. (Pats myself on the back for such a noble achievement.)

I decided that if I haven’t read the book (or even pulled it off the shelf) in the last few years, obvs I’m not that interested in reading it, so back to the FOL it goes, which, for some of them, was where I picked them up last time. The endless cycle of life. 🙂

In the meantime, I’m reading The Lizard Cage (Karen Connelly), a really good novel about a political prisoner in confinement in Burma….