Books, Glorious Books!

Let's see what we have here, shall we?



I purchased these two books the same evening at a small independent bookstore. Jonis Agee, the author of The River Wife, is considered somewhat of a local author, having lived in Saint Paul for many years. Wave of Terror by Theodore Odrach has recently been translated into English; it is a novel of Belarus under Stalin. What really strikes me about these two books, and what I did not notice until I brought them home, is how very similar they look. Both have green as the dominant color, both have writing in white, both show water and branches across the cover.



The Bloomsbury World Fiction book was an impulse buy on the same evening I bought the books shown above. There's nothing I like more than a book full of lists of books. Naturally, I had to see if Bloomsbury had any other books in this vein, and promptly ordered the Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide from The Book Depository. Both are wonderful, though I prefer the World Fiction Guide. The entries are arranged by country, with short descriptions of each book, longer ones for others, and the books and authors are oftentimes not familiar to me - a plus.



The top three books in this stack were part of my Book Depository order. I've been eyeing Michel Faber's The Apple for some time now - it is a book of short stories based on the characters that appeared in The Crimson Petal and The White, a book I found absolutely delicious. The Sophie Hannah book came from a swap, and the other two books are about the neighborhood in Chicago where I used to live, Old Town.



Here we have some books I am meant to review. The 19th Wife was actually a prize from Allison's Attic.

Quite a lot of lovely new books here, now I need only the time to read them.