Crowing and Confessions: new book acquisitions January-March 2021

We haven't had any of these threads for a while and I wanted to 'fess up to my order of books from the Taschen sale, which arrived today.

Joining my library of art and design books are:
Countryside: a report by Rem Koolhaas
Life? or theatre? by Charlotte Salomon
Yes is more by Bjarke Ingels Group (a graphic novel about architectural theory)
East of the sun, west of the moon by Kay Nielsen
Hiroshige: One hundred famous views of Edo

Has anyone else succumbed to the siren call of new books and wants to share?

The Annotated Sandman, Volume Two and The Annotated Sandman volume 4

Not for me, honest! It's the bloke's birthday at the weekend. (Still to find copies of One and Three at a sensible price...)

I've bought* 3 Kindle books:

Flights by Olga Tokarczuk
The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben
The Last Wish (The Witcher Saga Book 1) by Andrzej Sapkowski

Two Audible books:

The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained by DK
The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England by Ian Mortimer

And acquired this freebie from Amazon First Reads:

West with Giraffes: A Novel by Lynda Rutledge

*I believe all of the Kindle books were bought with 'No Rush Rewards' credits.

I've acquired a few, and I have more on-order. What I've got so far:

Growing Under Cover: Techniques for a More Productive, Weather-Resistant, Pest-Free Vegetable Garden by Niki Jabbour.

Plant partners : science-based companion planting strategies to minimize disease, reduce pests, improve soil fertility, and support pollination in the vegetable garden by Jessica Walliser.

Across the green grass fields by Seanan McGuire.

Adventures in lockdown by various authors. Short stories about the Doctor.

Simon Grave and the Sons of Irony: A Simon Grave Mystery by Len Boswell (from Early Reviewers)

I have been on a hardcover book-buying spree for the past several months...

I now own all 21 books in Cherryh's Foreigner series, (mostly got them used but all in very good or better condition).

Also been collecting both David Mitchell and Nick Harkaway titles, (Mitchell: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, The Bone Clocks, Slade House, Cloud Atlas, and his latest, Utopia Avenue. Harkaway: The Gone-Away World, Tigerman, and Gnomon. Still looking for a decent copy of Angelmaker for an affordable price.

Kameron Hurley's The Light Brigade, and God's War. The Stars Are Legion is currently in the mail.

Nora Jemisin's The City We Became was delivered a couple of weeks ago and her How Long 'til Black Future Month? is arriving today.

Asimov's Mirage and Asimov's Chimera by Mark W. Tiedemann, (still looking for a nice copy of Asimov's Aurora to complete the trilogy).

Under the Skin by Michel Faber and pristine copies of Gene Wolfe's There Are Doors and Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum round out my recent hardcover acquisitions.

In trade paperback, I picked up all four of Emma Newman's Planetfall series. Also got all three of Robert Jackson Bennett's The Divine Cities trilogy. Both are excellent series that I borrowed via Overdrive but wanted print copies for future re-reads.

I should probably slow down...?

>5 ScoLgo: "I should probably slow down...?"

Only if you don't have room. Nice haul!

I just added Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City to my catalog. Darn you Amazon Kindle deals!

I treated myself to this hardback, with this embossed. velvet cover, hardback edition of The Gothic Tales of Sheridan Le Fanu. Yes, a guilty pleasure; nice books.

>5 ScoLgo: Nice spree.

Have you read Utopia Avenue yet. I was tempted but held back.

I love all the Harkaway novels.

I am thinking of re-reading Foucault's Pendulum. When I first read it I felt it was 400 pages too long for the story that was in it. Having read many other Eco novels I suspect I was missing a lot of stuff in the 400 pages I thought was excess. I did, however, love the chapter on vanity publishing. I thought it was hilarious.

Enjoy your spree.

>6 clamairy: Room is starting to become a factor... I like hardcovers more than paperbacks but they do take up shelf space.

>9 pgmcc: Not yet. I also haven't read Slade House. I'm looking forward to both.

Foucault's Pendulum is huge! It is the second largest hardback on my shelf, (after Le Guin's massive The Books of Earthsea volume). I already had a copy of Pendulum in mass market paperback but wanted a hardcover for a future re-read; the text is so much bigger! ;)

I just realized I neglected to mention Lucifer and the Child before. That was another BB from the fine folk here in the pub. It's a beautiful book of quality workmanship and the dust jacket artwork is particularly haunting.

I have been purposely avoiding bargain pages, etc. for new Kindle books or otherwise, because I have so many now that I haven't read.

However, when I want a particular book I allow myself to buy one. In this case, I finally decided to give the Inspector Morse books a try. Having enjoyed the Mystery series of Inspector Morse for years, I thought I would try the Endeavor series, about his beginnings. I am also enjoying those. So, I thought it was time I actually tried reading one of the books!

Purchased for Kindle:
Last Bus to Woodstock by Colin Dexter

>11 MrsLee: I was dubious about the Endeavour TV series, but I gave it a chance and I liked it. I was also dubious about the Morse follow on series, Lewis, but once again, I think they carried it off well.

>11 MrsLee: The Morse TV series was one of the few TV programmes my late mother and I agreed on, and I have memories of us watching it together. It was that and interminable sessions of Spite and Malice or Scrabble, both of which I almost invariably won (so were very boring). (Basically the reason I ended up importing a cheap computer into the house...)

>11 MrsLee: I hope you have more luck with the Morse books than I did. Bought them all as a boxset collection and gave them away after only reading the first one.

>14 AHS-Wolfy: lol, that's why I only bought one!

Three new books today!
The Velocity of Revolution by Marshall Ryan Maresca.

The Last Smile in Sunder City and Dead Man In A Ditch by Luke Arnold.

I'm in the middle of a library book, though, so they have to wait a bit, which means TBR pile is going up again. Looking forward to getting stuck into them, though!

Audible was having a $5 sale, so I snagged:

The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s: An Oral History
Society's Child: My Autobiography by Janis Ian

I also I cashed in some a bit of my Kindle Challenge reward to buy:

A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes

Then I saw Elizabeth Kolbert's new book, Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future had just been published, so I added it to my Amazon wishlist. Within 24 hours I got an email from Amazon telling me they would give me a $5 credit towards the book. So between that and my digital rewards credits and the last of my Kindle Challenge money I got it for just a few bucks.

>17 clamairy: Er, ahem, Clam. I fear the touchstone at A thousand Ships seems to point to the wrong book.

>18 hfglen: It looks like an interesting book though ...

I snagged A deadly education by Naomi Novik when it was on sale for kindle yesterday. Other recent kindle purchases include The radium girls and Unorthodox.

>13 Maddz: My mother was a quiet woman who did not read a lot, but anyone who underestimated her powers at Scrabble was in for a rude awakening.

There are people here who have been taking pot-shots at me regarding Piranesi. You can put your BB guns away. It arrived 30 minutes ago.

>18 hfglen: Thank you. I'll have to fix it from my desktop.

>21 pgmcc: That's fast! I hope you enjoy it when it reaches the top of your TBR pile.

>21 pgmcc: I've been ducking that one for awhile. It doesn't sound like the kind of book I want to read right now, but then you go and post that marvelous cover. It's easier to resist if one can't see the temptation. I Ioved her 2 other books.

Yesterday I had the first opportunity to visit an actual book store in over a year. None of the newer releases (that I hadn't already ordered online) caught my eye, so I picked up three books by Terry Pratchett that I didn't already have. Wyrd Sisters, Lords and Ladies, and Men at Arms. I was hoping that they would have a copy of Going Postal, but, alas, no such luck.

I also received an online order earlier this month - Penric's Progress by Lois McMaster Bujold, and False Value by Ben Aaronovitch.

I'm on a bit of a book-buying binge right now (well, my birthday IS coming!). Several are pre-orders for things that aren't published yet, but so far I have received:

The Fey and the Furious, a graphic novel in the Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch.

Paladin's Grace by T. Kingfisher. I borrowed this from the library in 2020 and loved it. It's in the same world as her Clocktaur War series and a couple of other stand-alones. "A little gnole tells me" the sequel to this one will be out soon, but only in e-book. The print versions will have to wait because her print publisher is in Texas.

>26 tardis: I have an ebook version of Paladin's Grace, and Swordheart. Will get the sequel as soon as possible.

I purchased a hardcover copy of The Silmarillion on Abe's Books. 1977 version, said it was "very good" condition, so here's hoping.

>27 NorthernStar: I forget when it's due out, but soon. The hardcover will be a bit longer, but it's available for preorder from the publisher, too.

More books arrived today - the first four Murderbot novellas.

I am attempting to give up buying books for Lent, and read down my TBR piles instead. However, the book I pre-ordered from Girl Gone By has arrived - Jo returns to the Chalet School. I'm looking forward to reading it because I haven't read it since my early teens which was a long time ago now!

>25 NorthernStar: I am very envious of your bookstore visit! Browsing real shelves is one of the things I miss most at the moment. I'm glad you found some good books to take home with you.

One of my pre-orders arrived today: Calculated Risks by Seanan McGuire. Incryptid series #10. I've just finished a library book, so I'm going to dive right into it, and then go back to my other library books.

I also heard today that I'm getting another Early Reviewer book, Murder Most Pemberley by Jessica Berg. The ER description looked promising but I'm not sure if I should really look forward to it or not :)

>31 tardis: My copy of Calculated risks is on its way! Can't wait!

>31 tardis: Mine is at the post office - excited to pick it up later today!

I have to stop. I just snagged The Ladies of Grace Adieu.

>34 clamairy: I got it for £4.25 a few days ago, and today you show it to me at $1.99. Hmmmm!

>35 pgmcc: What's the Euro to Dollar rate right now? Your price seems a tad steep.

>36 clamairy: €1 = $1.22

£1 = $1.42

Amazon does not have a euro website. You can choose to pay in £ or €. If you choose € they do a conversion and their conversion rate is always worse that paying in £ and letting the credit card company do the conversion at a lower rate.

That doesn't surprise me, but it is unfair. Did you check to see if it was on sale for less today?

>38 clamairy: I did, and it is not.

>39 pgmcc: I would hope that made you feel better.

I was given Caliban's Hour, Petty the Biography and Salvation Lost. Good stuff I was looking forward to.

My real book (paperback) for January was Slavery in the New Testament: Literary, Social and Moral Dimensions.

In February, I finally bought a physical Orthodox Study Bible.
I also found a copy of Darkness on His Bones at a reasonable price, which I have been looking for for over a year.

And I received a copy of The Kalevala (in translation) in February too, as a Christmas present

And my first (real) book of March is The Fur Hat - a solid BB from pgmcc yesterday.

>43 -pilgrim-: I hope you enjoy it.

Is March Sherlock Holmes Pastiche Month? I just picked up three of James Lovegrove's Cthulhu Casebooks--Sherlock Holmes and the Shadwell Shadows. Sherlock Holmes and the Sussex Sea-Devils, and Sherlock Holmes and the Miskatonic Monstrosities, as well as Katherine Addison's The Angel of the Crows. All were on sale at Barnes and Noble, so I expect they're on sale elsewhere as well, at least in the US. I'm inclined to try the Addison first, because The Goblin Emperor. :) I have my 10th Thingaversary in a week or so, and am trying to get a head-start on my Thingaversary responsibilities to evade/appease the Enforcers.

Last week, I loaned out my copy of House of Leaves to a friend. A couple of days later, I remembered that his birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks so I sent him a message telling him to keep the book and wishing him an Early Happy Birthday. This, of course, was nothing more than a ruse gave me ample excuse to buy myself a new copy, which arrived via Amazon courier yesterday. I even got a $1.00 e-book credit for the purchase! It is nowhere near my birthday but I feel as though I made out even better than my friend... ;)

I snagged The Ministry for the Future and Fire and Blood while they were on sale over the last few days.

>47 clamairy: How on Earth did that happen?

>48 pgmcc: :o( I'm signed up for all these damned (blessed?) bargain ebook emails, and I read them all! That's how it happened.

I might also point out said emails are also always trying to sell me classics that I know I can get for free from Amazon. This bothers me greatly. LOL

My copy of Plant Partners: Science-Based Companion Planting Strategies for the Vegetable Garden by Jessica Walliser showed up yesterday. This was a book bullet from tardis. I checked it out of the library first and realized I would need a physical copy as reference.

>50 clamairy: I want to see photos of your garden when you do this. Not for proof, :) just for pretty.

.