There's a catch...

Ohhhh, lovely new (to me) books! And the best part? I didn't pay for any of them. It's true, they are all mooches and swaps and the only brand new one was obtained with a gift card.



Let's see what we have...

The Brimstone Wedding by Barbara Vine - I really enjoyed Asta's Book and have been investigating Vine's backlist to see what I might enjoy. This looks enticing and I should have a few more Vine books on the way soon.

Lot's of great Virago finds...

Cecilia by Fanny Burney - This is huge! I'm thinking this was not the best format for this book to be published in....it's rather awkward.

The Way Things Are by Delafield - This is about the doubts a 34 year old woman has about her marriage - are they really 'happily married'?

Crewe Train by Rose Macaulay

Deerbrook by Harriet Martineau - The author was a friend of Charlotte Bronte. The plot sounds reminiscent of an Austen book.

An Omlette anda Glass of Wine by Elizabeth David - I'm looking forward getting to know the work of this classic food writer.

Nigella Express by Nigella Lawson - This book is beautifully published but I can already tell it won't be one of my favorites of hers. I think what I like most about Nigella is her writing and this book has a bit less of that - in the interest of being Express, of course.

I emailed a publisher about an author's visit to my city and he sent me a great link to a site that lists what authors will be in your area. Genius! And from signing up, it looks as thought this might be international. I haven't seen anything in particular I'd like to see, but I'm going to keep checking.

My incoherent thoughts.

The last couple of weeks have brought the end of preschool and many tears on my part (Mom, why are you sad? You still get to bring me to Kindergarten.), a terribly busy and stressful 4 days of work over the holiday weekend, the last outdoor swimming of the year, and the first days of Kindergarten. I haven't slept well in days, and have been busy cleaning our home since we are having a cat allergic guest over tonight to celebrate Preschool Graduation. The good news: a clean house, a happy child in school, and dinner is ready to go.

I have completed three books since I was last here and started on two more. I will write about them next week when I will hopefully have better luck putting words together.

I have watched one film over the past week - the most recent production of Persuasion - I believe it aired in Britain last Spring. It was fine - I enjoyed the 1995 version much, much more. I was tired of the closeups of Anne in this new version and the running sequence at the end was just silly. I just cannot get enough of the letter towards the end - 'You pierce my soul.'

Here are some of my new books. This stack contains the books I paid for. The top two were ordered from The Book Depository in a moment of weakness. I'd had my eye on these for a while thanks to all the wonderful reviews. The remaining three are used, 2 Viragos - Hester and Golden Miles, and the book on the bottom is Through One Administration is by Frances Hodgson Burnett and comes recommended by Elaine.




Here are the books I've received from Paperbackswap.




Asta's Book was a recommendation from Danielle. There are two newer Viragos, The Dark Tide and Curious, if True. A Fine Balance sounds wonderful - I read about this on a blog but cannot remember where. Much Depends on Dinner is nonfiction - I'm not sure where I heard about this book. The back blurb states it "corrects our lack of knowledge of these most ubiquitous of foods and lays before us a captivating register of facts, myths, fetishes, and rituals that stretches back into our early history."

I'm really looking forward to getting into a routine in the next weeks. I have lots of blog housekeeping to do - comments to respond to, blogs to visits and blogs that I've been reading and need to add to my sidebar.

Have a great weekend!

Stacks

I think I'd like to take a look at the books I've acquired lately.



The first stack is all from mooches and swaps except for The Other Eden. I've been reading so much about Snowbooks lately and was thrilled to find this at Half Price Books. The top three books by Monica Dickens came from an American woman that spent time in the UK some years ago. I'd been hoping to come across a copy of One Pair of Hands for some time and the others are the icing on the cake. Nutmeg wrote so eloquently about Gift From the Sea, I just had to procure a copy for myself. I am already enjoying just opening it up and reading passages at random. The book on the bottom, Ordinary Lives, A Hundred Years Ago is a Virago. Published in 1982, it is filled with wonderful photographs and first hand accounts of life prior to 1900.




The second stack is made up mostly of birthday gifts. In a Sunburned Country was a recent impulse buy and I'm currently about halfway through it. The Allison Weir book Innocent Traitor is her latest release. I've read lots of her nonfiction books about Henry VIII. I was happy to see this book about Lady Jane Grey since she has been a sort of pet subject for me ever since the movie in the 80s starring Helena Bonham Carter. Real Cooking at the bottom was a birthday present to myself. I just cannot get enough of Nigel Slater's writing. His next book looks to be about English Cooking and I don't expect it to be published here. Book Depository, here I come.





This last photograph shows the titles here a bit better. I've been thumbing through How to Run Your Home Without Help and I'm exhausted just looking over it. I have a new appreciation lately for all my modern conveniences.

This will be a working weekend for me, so I will not be getting too much reading done. Bill Bryson's book is certain to keep me entertained during my meal breaks. I'll be eating that wheatberry salad again. Have a wonderful weekend!

And the rest.

I have had several events this week that have really cut into my reading time, so as I have not completed any books, I will share the rest of my ever growing stash.

This is the nonfiction stack. From top to bottom:




The Short and Long Times of Mrs Beeton - I've had my eye on this for awhile and like reading about this time period.

The Rare and the Beautiful- This is about the lives of the Garman sisters. I don't know anything about them, but I came across this and I am always up for biographies about sisters. I've also loved The Sisters:The Story of the Mitford Family and Victoria's Daughters.

The Seamstress - The holocaust survival story of a young woman. This is another favorite genre of mine.

Victorian London - I had been looking for a deal on this for some time.

Circle of Sisters - I have wanted to read this since I read another of Judith Flander's books Inside the Victorian Home which I loved. Again, this is another biography of sisters. This actually came from Half Price Book's recent sale.

The fiction stack:



The Moonstone - I've thought I would like this for some time.

The Singing Bird - Another book I've been looking for a good price on since the library doesn't have it. One of the only 'modern women's fiction' books here.

Pinkerton's Sister - Looks interesting, particularly for bibliophiles, but daunting in size.

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox - I've been hearing about this on some other blogs.

The Moonlit Cage - I really, really liked Linda Holeman's book The Linnet Bird and was happy to find another book by her. This is about a girl from Afghanistan traveling to 1850's England.

The Great Stink - I had been considering this when Nutmeg wrote a great review of it. Clare Clark's new book , The Nature of Monsters, looks great.

Hmmm. Notice any trends here? Women's fiction and historical fiction, women's history, books about the UK, specifically those set in Victorian times and early 20th century. Books about sisters, books about the holocaust. These books are a great snapshot of genres I love to read, and always seek out.

Stacks of books

Lots of books have made their way into my home lately. The first stack, and my favorite, is my Mother's Day gift from my husband. I gave him a shortlist of Persephone titles that I wanted and asked him to choose 3 and have them shipped to me. We did this for my Christmas present as well. These beautiful grey books arrived last week and I am thrilled to add them to my collection.




This second stack comes from bookmooch, paperback swap, and 2 titles are from a used book store. I was most happy to find the 2 Rosamond Lehmann titles. I have 'met' so many wonderful people from blogging, but also from bookmooch and paperbackswap. It's so amazing to receive a book from someone and then have a dialogue with them about where life has taken them.




Free books anyone? Have you heard of mypoints? A friend suggested I sign up with them - it's a way to earn points and then you can use your points to 'buy' gift certificates. How do you get points? Well, they send you multiple emails daily usually advertising something and if you do the 'click thru' you get 5 points. The quicker way to get points is by shopping online and going through mypoints to get to the retailer. I personally do a lot of online clothing shopping and have earned many points this way. Another way is to join, or rejoin one of the online book clubs such as zooba or book of the month club - I earned 1500 points from joining zooba.



The books you see here arrived from overstock.com. I had 2 $25 gift certificates compliments of mypoints and my portion of the bill for these was $9 and some change. One of my other friends tried mypoints and was annoyed by all the emails; it's not for everyone, but it works for me.

I would like to go on about all these titles but to tell you the truth, I'm not feeling well. I think I picked up a virus from my daughter ( that she has in addition to the strep) and as I've been typing I've been feeling more and more out of sorts. I think I'll go lie down.

Lovely discovery

Thanks again to bookgirl for leading me to my favorite recent discovery, bookcloseouts.com. I was able to find a few books there I've been wanting for some time which for the most part were unavailable in the US. Here's what I received:

The Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater - I love, love, love this book. I borrowed it from the library last December based on a recommendation from Bon Appetit magazine ( yes, I'm a magazine addict as well) and I thought I would just skim over it and take it back. I started reading it and wound up reading it cover to cover, mostly at my in laws house when I was there for Christmas. It reads like the best novel, and I just want to move in with Mr Slater and eat everything he's serving. Well, I knew then that I had to OWN this, but was waiting to find a deal on it, which I finally did.

Tarte Tatin by Susan Loomis - I read her book On Rue Tatin some years ago and really enjoyed it. I browse Amazon UK quite a bit and became aware that she had written a sequel, which for some unknown reason was never published here in the US so was thrilled to find this.

Missing and Revenge by Mary Stanley - I came across her book Retreat some years ago in a used book store and again, enjoyed it quite a bit. She has not been published in the US, so, although I knew she'd written other things since then, there was not an easy way to add them to my library. I was thrilled to find these.

Sixty Lights by Gail Jones - I've read a couple reviews of this out in blogland, and a particularly good one over at Reading Matters. I've had my eye out for this ever since.

The Accomplice by Kathryn Heyman - I don't know much about this except it kept coming up as similar to the others and looks interesting. It is about a shipwreck off the coast of Australia and the survivors.

The company's headquarters are in Canada, and they cross the border to ship to US addresses via Media Mail which makes for fairly inexpensive shipping. Their stock must be coming to them from all over, as 3 of the books I received are Australian editions. Most of their novels are between $3.99 and $5.99 so the prices are a steal as far as I'm concerned. I highly recommend them!

New Acquisitions

Oh, I've finally figured out how to load an image from the web. I'm a bit slow on these things sometimes, I'm afraid.

I'd like to share the lovely books that have made their way into my home this week.

From the Half Priced Books near my workplace I purchased:

The Observations by Jane Harris - I've had my eye on this for a while and I hope I am not disappointed. I found a hardcover priced at $6.98 which I thought was a good price.

Bettany's Book by Thomas Keneally - This caught my eye since it is a British edition. I enjoyed Schindler's List and thought this looked worth a try, also does not seem to be available in US.

Mr Skeffington by Elizabeth von Arnim - Virago. I've neither heard of or seen this before so was happy to find this.

The Fruit of the Tree by Edith Wharton - Virago. Again, I'd neither heard or or seen this before. It was published in 1907, so one of her earlier works.


From paperbackswap.com I received:

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym - I've never read her, and the similarities often drawn between her and Jane Austen are just too tempting.

The House in Clewe Street by Mary Lavin - Virago

The Matriarch by G.B. Stern - Virago. When this arrived the cover looked so familiar to me but I didn't think I owned this volume. I looked through all my viragos and found this artwork - "Supper" by Mark Gertler - on the cover of Hunt the Slipper by Violet Trefusis, a VMC - Dial Press Edition. Apparently, Virago recycles their covers. Frankly, I wish they'd recycle them again and use the old cover images on their new editions.

In other fun mail, a package from Sublime Stitching with new embroidery patterns and materials for transferring images. Yeah!

Good mail day!

I love good mail days! Today I received:

2 shirts for summer from Eddie Bauer - great classic clothes for those who are short (me) and those who are tall (my husband)

3 books from swaps on paperbackswap.com
On the Side of the Angels by Betty Miller (another Virago!)
The Pieces From Berlin by Michael Pye
Miss Garnet's Angel by Salley Vickers (pleased to see it is the UK version)

1 copy of Slightly Foxed, issue 13 - Thanks to the lovely Karen over at Cornflower for making me aware of these. It is a beautiful publication and now I'll be wishing for a subscription. Mother's Day is coming up (in the US)......