It must be that time of year

This is my first experience with the 'end of the school year' and it's a doozy. I can hardly keep track of everyplace we need to be let alone gather my thoughts and write an intelligent review of anything. I've watched my girl in 5 'performances' since last Thursday, not including t-ball or swimming, or the kindergarten art show or girl scouts...whew. So, since I haven't shown any book stacks in some time, I thought I'd share some recent acquisitions.

Lots of these books came from bookcloseouts. I was thrilled to find Dark Hearts of Chicago there - I'd read some great reviews of this a year or so ago and wouldn't you know it hasn't been published in the US. Similar story applies to A Hidden Life. The Louise Erdrich book was bought used since I enjoyed The Master Butcher's Singing Club so much.



The four books on the bottom of this stack were purchased at a book sale. I went to the same sale last year and had better luck. There were a lot of 'dealers' there - they had scanners and would scan the codes on the books to see if they matched what they were looking for. I found them irritating since they would block whole sections of shelves and the space was quite cramped. I was happy to snatch The Blood Doctor right out from under someones nose before he could scan it. Ha! This pile is heavy on suspense, including another mooched Barbara Vine and the Sophie Hannah book, an author I became aware of through other book bloggers and who is not published here as far as I can tell. Can you see that Agatha Christie? It's And Then There Were None - I've yet to read her but read a great review of this recently.


This third stack is quite a mishmash. Book Crush is Nancy Pearl's version of Book Lust for children and teens. I've found loads of great suggestions for my daughter and for friend's children as well. My daughter tends to go straight for the 'character' books (barbie, princesses, etc.) and I'm trying to steer her gently away. Karen wrote about Can Any Mother Help Me? some time ago and I've been waiting for the paperback to come out (bookdepository). The subject is fascinating - a group of women in England in the 1930's form a secret magazine which they write and pass around - and leave each other comments on! It sounds like blogging but without computers. Let's see, more nonfiction, A Fatal Waltz compliments of Harper Collins and finally a book I was excited to pick up this past weekend, The Minnesota Homegrown Cookbook. It's filled with stories of restaurants, farms, and recipes using local ingredients. So far, I'm the only owner of it on LibraryThing! I just realized I forgot to photograph another book which seems timely - The Lizard Cage by Karen Connelly - which is set in Burma. I read about it on a blog, I think, but cannot remember where.


As I look over these books, I am again astounded by how many have been purchased as a direct result of book bloggers. I never would have known about many of these or thought I would have been interested them. I thank you, as always, for letting me be a part of this amazing community.

Hopefully, regular programming to return soon.