Summer has come and passed, the innocent can never last. Wake me up when September ends
Bookish Post Alert!
Quite a fine haul from the Seattle Library Book Sale today, although the selection was down a bit from last time. That's okay. I still got 14 books for a grand total of $6.40. And some of these are to replace current books I own (hardbacks for paperbacks), and a couple of old ones to sell back at the used book store down the street (I have multiple reasons for that).
Fiction - Hardback
The Mammoth Hunters and The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel (hardbacks, to replace my paperbacks, which will be sold back to a used bookstore. I'm trying to get the collection in hardback).
Spring Moon - Bette Bao Lord (ditto on the hardback)
Wideacre - Philippa Gregory (her debut novel... she also wrote The Other Boleyn Girl, and I've met her, yay!)
The Forest House - Marion Zimmer Bradley (author of The Mists of Avalon)
Falling Angels - Tracy Chevalier (author of Girl with a Pearl Earring)
Three Fates - Nora Roberts (less romancey than some of her other novels)
Circles of Stone - Joan Dahr Lambert (3 women, generations apart, with the same name, over a few thousand years...)
Lady of the Sea - Rosalind Miles (third in the Tristan & Isolde novels, which means I need to get the other 2! but this is in fantastic condition, so was worth 50c.).
Fiction - Paperback
Queen of Sorcery - David Eddings (2nd in the Belgariad, and adds to my collection!)
The Witching Hour - Anne Rice (I've read very few of her books, but Gretchen said this one is good, she loves Anne Rice)
Non-Fiction:
Mythology - Edith Hamilton (and in EXCELLENT condition!)
The Middle Ages: A Literary History of England, Vol I - Kemp Malone & Albert C. Baugh
A Collection of Orations from Homer to McKinley - Edited by Mayo W. Hazeltine (published in 1902, am considering selling it to the used bookstore, as last time I sold an old book it turned out to be worth like $90. But I might actually keep this one. It's also Volume One of TWENTY-FIVE... um, but I'm not planning on getting them all, yeesh!).
Heroic Lives - Albert R. Vail (published 1917, ditto on the above. Maybe I'll split the difference and read, then sell).
All in all, quite a happy bunch of finds!
And continuing with the book theme, and my reviews,
Book #39
Rebellion
Nora Roberts
One of my romances, it's a typical story of a fiesty heroine and a tall-dark-and-broody hero, with usual assertions that he is always right and she finds a way around him. With, naturally, lots of hot amazing sex. Actually, not as much as, say, a Virginia Henly novel. Set in the Scottish Highlands shortly before the Battle of Culloden, the daughter of a Scottish laird meets a traditional English duke, who is himself descended from the Isle of Skye. She hates all Englishmen, he desires nothing less than to make her his.
It's a fun, historical romp with a fair amount of detail of the Scottish people who tried to put Bonnie Prince Charlie on the throne. As it's the start of a series of books on this family by Roberts, I recommend it if you like romances!
Book #40
Confessions of a Part-Time Sorceress
Shelly Mazzanoble
Recommended and lent to me by eriksdb, this is a book for girls who are thinking (or, maybe NOT thinking) about playing Dungeons and Dragons, and it's hysterical. This is a gal who speaks my language (that would be Italian - Prada, Balenciaga, Armani, etc.), and she puts "gaming" into a whole new perspective. She makes the argument that as little girls, we play with dolls/ponies/Barbies/stuffed animals etc., and really, it's not that different. You have a character, and it goes on adventures, working with a group and at the mercy of a Dungeon Master and the roll of the dice. She also dispells the stereotypes that you have to be: a) a 7th grade boy; b) anti-social; c) addicted to pop and snacks that turn your fingers orange; d) have sexual perversion involving "role playing"; d) all of the above, and then some.
I found this more credible when she announced at the beginning of the book that she actually WORKS for Wizards of the Coast (which produces the D&D world) and she had never played. She came into this with all of those preconceptions, and really enjoys her role-playing time. I would recommend this to pretty much any gal, and it's seriously making me think about ... gaming. ;P
Book #41
Dune
Frank Herbert
One of the science fiction classics, I figured I should experience it. I have to admit, it's not one of my favorites. Technically, there's nothing wrong with it - the plot is decent and complex, there's a lot of technical mumbo-jumbo that makes it 'sci-fi'ish enough to be set far in the future, but I think I just didn't quite care enough about the characters. Paul Muad'dib is like a freaking Messiah and does nothing wrong, and the occasional insights into 1st person thought feels choppy and discombobulating. I think I'd like it more if it was in 3rd person, but it feels almost biblical in it's presentation of the Life and Times of Paul Muad'dib.
It's a good book, though, but just not to my taste. If you like sci-fi, space travel, international (interstellar, actually) government conspiracies, you'd like this. As I said, all the aspects of it are interesting, I just couldn't connect with the overall experience of reading it.
Book #42
The Firebrand
Marion Zimmer Bradley
One of my favorite books, from the author of The Mists of Avalon, this is the story of the Trojan War, from the point of view of Kassandra, the prophetess from The Iliad who was doomed to speak only the truth but no one would ever believe her. As with all of Bradley's books that I've read, this is very Goddess-centric, although as Kassandra is a priestess of Apollo, there's a fair bit of time devoted to both.
It's an extremely well-written book, and includes all the characters we know and love, and features Akhilles as a whiney little ass, and Paris as a self-absorbed, rather distant twin brother to Kassandra. Helen is presented here as a good-intention instrument of Aphrodite. The story of what happens to Kassandra AFTER the fall of Troy is also interesting, as noted in the afterword. Highly, highly recommended!
Currently reading:
Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson, courtesy of gonzo_md
EDIT: ganked from tanisha, and updated in this post, since it fits so well with my overall theme.
These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (as of today). As usual, bold what you have read, italicise what you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. The numbers after each one are the number of LT users who used the tag of that book.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (149)
Anna Karenina (132)
Crime and Punishment (121)
Catch-22 (117)
One Hundred Years of Solitude (115)
Wuthering Heights (110)
The Silmarillion (104)It's on my list!
Life of Pi : a novel (94)
The Name of the Rose (91)
Don Quixote (91)
Moby Dick (86)
Ulysses (84)
Madame Bovary (83)
The Odyssey (83)
Pride and prejudice (83)
Jane Eyre (80)
A Tale of Two Cities (80)
The Brothers Karamazov (80) It's on my list, per Taranovski's rec
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies (79)
War and Peace (78)
Vanity Fair (74) It's on my list
The time traveler's wife (73) A FAVORITE!!
The Iliad (73)
Emma (73)
The Blind Assassin (73)
The Kite Runner (71)
Mrs. Dalloway (70)
Great Expectations (70)
American Gods (68) also on my list!
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (67)
Atlas shrugged (67) also on the list
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books (66)
Memoirs of a Geisha (66)
Middlesex (66) my borrowed copy is sitting not 4 feet from me!
Quicksilver (66)
Wicked : The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (65)
The Canterbury tales (64)
The Historian : a novel (63)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (63)
Love in the Time of Cholera (62)
Brave New World (61)
The Fountainhead (61)
Foucault's pendulum (61) definitely on the list
Middlemarch (61)
Frankenstein (59)
The Count of Monte Cristo (59)
Dracula (59)
A Clockwork Orange (59)
Anansi Boys (58)
The Once and Future King (57)
The Grapes of Wrath (57)
The poisonwood Bible : a novel (57)
1984 (57)
Angels & Demons (56) Oh god, I hope this isn't considered a classic...
The Inferno (56)
The Satanic Verses (55)
Sense and Sensibility (55)
The picture of Dorian Gray (55)
Mansfield Park (55)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (54)
To the Lighthouse (54)
Tess of the D'Urbervilles (54)
Oliver Twist (54)
Gulliver's travels (53)
Les Misérables (53)
The Corrections (53)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (52)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (52)
Dune (51)
The prince (51)
The Sound and the Fury (51)
Angela's Ashes : a memoir (51)
The God of Small Things (51)
A People's History of the United States : 1492-present (51)
Cryptonomicon (50)
Neverwhere (50)
A Confederacy of Dunces (50)
A Short History of Nearly Everything (50)
Dubliners (50)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (49)
Beloved (49)
Slaughterhouse-five (49)
The Scarlet Letter (48)
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (48)
The Mists of Avalon (47)
Oryx and Crake : a novel (47)
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed (47)
Cloud Atlas (47)
The Confusion (46)
Lolita (46)
Persuasion (46)
Northanger Abbey (46)
The Catcher in the Rye (46)
On the road (46)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (45)
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything (45)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values (45)
The Aeneid (45)
Watership Down (44)
Gravity's Rainbow (44)
The Hobbit (44)
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences (44)
White teeth (44)
Treasure Island (44)
David Copperfield (44)
The Three Musketeers (44)
Hmmmm... apparently I don't leave many books incomplete, do I?
Also sampled 2 more BPAL scents this weekend - Darkness and Ode on Melancholy, both of which ended up with a distinct baby-powder scent on me (might be the opium and rose notes, respectively). My favorite is still Hamadryad from last weekend. Gretchen has tried Shanghai, Whitechapel and Black Forest, and Eric has been both the Vicomte de Valmont and Mad Hatter, both of which are lovely on him.
I know I'll be sick of it soon, but I'm loving the rain. Not loving the traffic that was insanely horrible all weekend and probably due to the rain in some part. But like many others on my friendslist, I'm loving listening to it fall and staying warm and cozy inside. I laid in bed for almost 10 minutes this morning, just enjoying it. So calming.
Similarly, Green Day's "When September Ends" calms me, too.
Okay, this is my second insanely long entry this weekend, so I'm going to go now, and let you enjoy the rest of your Sunday. Until tomorrow, my loves, wake me up when September ends.
Quite a fine haul from the Seattle Library Book Sale today, although the selection was down a bit from last time. That's okay. I still got 14 books for a grand total of $6.40. And some of these are to replace current books I own (hardbacks for paperbacks), and a couple of old ones to sell back at the used book store down the street (I have multiple reasons for that).
Fiction - Hardback
The Mammoth Hunters and The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel (hardbacks, to replace my paperbacks, which will be sold back to a used bookstore. I'm trying to get the collection in hardback).
Spring Moon - Bette Bao Lord (ditto on the hardback)
Wideacre - Philippa Gregory (her debut novel... she also wrote The Other Boleyn Girl, and I've met her, yay!)
The Forest House - Marion Zimmer Bradley (author of The Mists of Avalon)
Falling Angels - Tracy Chevalier (author of Girl with a Pearl Earring)
Three Fates - Nora Roberts (less romancey than some of her other novels)
Circles of Stone - Joan Dahr Lambert (3 women, generations apart, with the same name, over a few thousand years...)
Lady of the Sea - Rosalind Miles (third in the Tristan & Isolde novels, which means I need to get the other 2! but this is in fantastic condition, so was worth 50c.).
Fiction - Paperback
Queen of Sorcery - David Eddings (2nd in the Belgariad, and adds to my collection!)
The Witching Hour - Anne Rice (I've read very few of her books, but Gretchen said this one is good, she loves Anne Rice)
Non-Fiction:
Mythology - Edith Hamilton (and in EXCELLENT condition!)
The Middle Ages: A Literary History of England, Vol I - Kemp Malone & Albert C. Baugh
A Collection of Orations from Homer to McKinley - Edited by Mayo W. Hazeltine (published in 1902, am considering selling it to the used bookstore, as last time I sold an old book it turned out to be worth like $90. But I might actually keep this one. It's also Volume One of TWENTY-FIVE... um, but I'm not planning on getting them all, yeesh!).
Heroic Lives - Albert R. Vail (published 1917, ditto on the above. Maybe I'll split the difference and read, then sell).
All in all, quite a happy bunch of finds!
And continuing with the book theme, and my reviews,
Book #39
Rebellion
Nora Roberts
One of my romances, it's a typical story of a fiesty heroine and a tall-dark-and-broody hero, with usual assertions that he is always right and she finds a way around him. With, naturally, lots of hot amazing sex. Actually, not as much as, say, a Virginia Henly novel. Set in the Scottish Highlands shortly before the Battle of Culloden, the daughter of a Scottish laird meets a traditional English duke, who is himself descended from the Isle of Skye. She hates all Englishmen, he desires nothing less than to make her his.
It's a fun, historical romp with a fair amount of detail of the Scottish people who tried to put Bonnie Prince Charlie on the throne. As it's the start of a series of books on this family by Roberts, I recommend it if you like romances!
Book #40
Confessions of a Part-Time Sorceress
Shelly Mazzanoble
Recommended and lent to me by eriksdb, this is a book for girls who are thinking (or, maybe NOT thinking) about playing Dungeons and Dragons, and it's hysterical. This is a gal who speaks my language (that would be Italian - Prada, Balenciaga, Armani, etc.), and she puts "gaming" into a whole new perspective. She makes the argument that as little girls, we play with dolls/ponies/Barbies/stuffed animals etc., and really, it's not that different. You have a character, and it goes on adventures, working with a group and at the mercy of a Dungeon Master and the roll of the dice. She also dispells the stereotypes that you have to be: a) a 7th grade boy; b) anti-social; c) addicted to pop and snacks that turn your fingers orange; d) have sexual perversion involving "role playing"; d) all of the above, and then some.
I found this more credible when she announced at the beginning of the book that she actually WORKS for Wizards of the Coast (which produces the D&D world) and she had never played. She came into this with all of those preconceptions, and really enjoys her role-playing time. I would recommend this to pretty much any gal, and it's seriously making me think about ... gaming. ;P
Book #41
Dune
Frank Herbert
One of the science fiction classics, I figured I should experience it. I have to admit, it's not one of my favorites. Technically, there's nothing wrong with it - the plot is decent and complex, there's a lot of technical mumbo-jumbo that makes it 'sci-fi'ish enough to be set far in the future, but I think I just didn't quite care enough about the characters. Paul Muad'dib is like a freaking Messiah and does nothing wrong, and the occasional insights into 1st person thought feels choppy and discombobulating. I think I'd like it more if it was in 3rd person, but it feels almost biblical in it's presentation of the Life and Times of Paul Muad'dib.
It's a good book, though, but just not to my taste. If you like sci-fi, space travel, international (interstellar, actually) government conspiracies, you'd like this. As I said, all the aspects of it are interesting, I just couldn't connect with the overall experience of reading it.
Book #42
The Firebrand
Marion Zimmer Bradley
One of my favorite books, from the author of The Mists of Avalon, this is the story of the Trojan War, from the point of view of Kassandra, the prophetess from The Iliad who was doomed to speak only the truth but no one would ever believe her. As with all of Bradley's books that I've read, this is very Goddess-centric, although as Kassandra is a priestess of Apollo, there's a fair bit of time devoted to both.
It's an extremely well-written book, and includes all the characters we know and love, and features Akhilles as a whiney little ass, and Paris as a self-absorbed, rather distant twin brother to Kassandra. Helen is presented here as a good-intention instrument of Aphrodite. The story of what happens to Kassandra AFTER the fall of Troy is also interesting, as noted in the afterword. Highly, highly recommended!
Currently reading:
Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson, courtesy of gonzo_md
EDIT: ganked from tanisha, and updated in this post, since it fits so well with my overall theme.
These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (as of today). As usual, bold what you have read, italicise what you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. The numbers after each one are the number of LT users who used the tag of that book.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (149)
Anna Karenina (132)
Crime and Punishment (121)
Catch-22 (117)
One Hundred Years of Solitude (115)
Wuthering Heights (110)
The Silmarillion (104)It's on my list!
Life of Pi : a novel (94)
The Name of the Rose (91)
Don Quixote (91)
Moby Dick (86)
Ulysses (84)
Madame Bovary (83)
The Odyssey (83)
Pride and prejudice (83)
Jane Eyre (80)
A Tale of Two Cities (80)
The Brothers Karamazov (80) It's on my list, per Taranovski's rec
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies (79)
War and Peace (78)
Vanity Fair (74) It's on my list
The time traveler's wife (73) A FAVORITE!!
The Iliad (73)
Emma (73)
The Blind Assassin (73)
The Kite Runner (71)
Mrs. Dalloway (70)
Great Expectations (70)
American Gods (68) also on my list!
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (67)
Atlas shrugged (67) also on the list
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books (66)
Memoirs of a Geisha (66)
Middlesex (66) my borrowed copy is sitting not 4 feet from me!
Quicksilver (66)
Wicked : The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (65)
The Canterbury tales (64)
The Historian : a novel (63)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (63)
Love in the Time of Cholera (62)
Brave New World (61)
The Fountainhead (61)
Foucault's pendulum (61) definitely on the list
Middlemarch (61)
Frankenstein (59)
The Count of Monte Cristo (59)
Dracula (59)
A Clockwork Orange (59)
Anansi Boys (58)
The Once and Future King (57)
The Grapes of Wrath (57)
The poisonwood Bible : a novel (57)
1984 (57)
Angels & Demons (56) Oh god, I hope this isn't considered a classic...
The Inferno (56)
The Satanic Verses (55)
Sense and Sensibility (55)
The picture of Dorian Gray (55)
Mansfield Park (55)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (54)
To the Lighthouse (54)
Tess of the D'Urbervilles (54)
Oliver Twist (54)
Gulliver's travels (53)
Les Misérables (53)
The Corrections (53)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (52)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (52)
Dune (51)
The prince (51)
The Sound and the Fury (51)
Angela's Ashes : a memoir (51)
The God of Small Things (51)
A People's History of the United States : 1492-present (51)
Cryptonomicon (50)
Neverwhere (50)
A Confederacy of Dunces (50)
A Short History of Nearly Everything (50)
Dubliners (50)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (49)
Beloved (49)
Slaughterhouse-five (49)
The Scarlet Letter (48)
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (48)
The Mists of Avalon (47)
Oryx and Crake : a novel (47)
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed (47)
Cloud Atlas (47)
The Confusion (46)
Lolita (46)
Persuasion (46)
Northanger Abbey (46)
The Catcher in the Rye (46)
On the road (46)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (45)
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything (45)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values (45)
The Aeneid (45)
Watership Down (44)
Gravity's Rainbow (44)
The Hobbit (44)
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences (44)
White teeth (44)
Treasure Island (44)
David Copperfield (44)
The Three Musketeers (44)
Hmmmm... apparently I don't leave many books incomplete, do I?
Also sampled 2 more BPAL scents this weekend - Darkness and Ode on Melancholy, both of which ended up with a distinct baby-powder scent on me (might be the opium and rose notes, respectively). My favorite is still Hamadryad from last weekend. Gretchen has tried Shanghai, Whitechapel and Black Forest, and Eric has been both the Vicomte de Valmont and Mad Hatter, both of which are lovely on him.
I know I'll be sick of it soon, but I'm loving the rain. Not loving the traffic that was insanely horrible all weekend and probably due to the rain in some part. But like many others on my friendslist, I'm loving listening to it fall and staying warm and cozy inside. I laid in bed for almost 10 minutes this morning, just enjoying it. So calming.
Similarly, Green Day's "When September Ends" calms me, too.
Click to viewOkay, this is my second insanely long entry this weekend, so I'm going to go now, and let you enjoy the rest of your Sunday. Until tomorrow, my loves, wake me up when September ends.