Jenny's Books Added in March 2014

They followed me home!  It's a good thing I have a Room of Requirement.

These are the books that came into my house in the month of March.  See the digital, eBook and audio, later in the post.

Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding
Crown of Stars by James Tiptree Jr.
Alice's Tea Cup by Haley Fox
Libby by Betty John
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson


The Selected Letters of Louisa May Alcott
The Revolutions by Felix Gilman

The Gilman is a review copy, something about time travel which seems to be a theme in my reading lately.  I picked up the Tiptree, Fox, Alcott, and Stephenson at a used book store trip (paid for with store credit from trade-ins!).  Alice's Tea Cup has the strange distinction of being the only cookbook to make me cry, and I can count the number of books that have made me cry as an adult on one hand.  It's just so much like the restaurant I can see myself owning that it was too much to bear.  When I saw it on the shelf of the used bookstore, I couldn't leave it there.  I have a love/hate relationship with Neal Stephenson - he has written some of my favorite books (Snow Crash, Anathem) and some of my most frustrating books (Quicksilver!).  Still I feel I should try this one, it's the last big outlier of his works.  The Alcott fits under my epistolary goal for the year, and Tiptree fits under the author goal, but I've already read one volume of Tiptree stories in 2014 so I'll put that one aside for a bit.

I got the John and the Fielding from Paperbackswap.com.  I'm considering adding journals as a goal for 2015, and both of them fit under that category.  But the real reason for the Fielding is the specific imprint. I ended up going through and adding all the Penguin Ink, Penguin Threads, and Penguin Deluxe Classics titles to my wishlist.  I don't usually buy books for the cover but just look at this! 

Okay I'm a sucker! Guilty!

The other books coming into my collection this past month have been intangible yet substantial.

Audiobooks (digital downloads)
Veronica Mars: The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line by Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham, read by Kristen Bell
To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer, read by Paul Hecht
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm, read by Anna Fields
And the Dark Sacred Night by Julia Glass, read by Mark Deakins
Creativity, Inc by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace, read by Peter Altschuler
The Ecstasy of Surrender by Judith Orloff, M.D., read by Judith Orloff
The Blazing World by Suri Hustvedt, read by Patricia Rodriguez and Eric Meyers
Call to Action by Jimmy Carter, read by Jimmy Carter

The Veronica Mars book was irresistable after seeing the movie, and the book continues the story after the time of the movie.  I've already devoured it.  I picked up the Farmer and Wilhelm from a BOGO Audible sale, where I have a monthly subscription.  The rest of the audiobooks were review copies that I have not yet listened to.

eBooks
Slices of Life: A Food Writer Cooks through Many a Conundrum by Leah Eskin
Sous Chef by Michael Gibney
Sleep Donation by Karen Russell
Divergent by Veronica Roth
The Word Exchange by Alena Graedon
Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Played with Fire (graphic novel version) by Denise Mina and Andrea Mutti

Except for Divergent, which my husband had purchased in iBooks and read months ago, these titles were review copies from NetGalley.  I've finished all but the Graedon, but I'm really excited about that one!  I do see a fair number of food related books coming through my house - cookbooks and memoirs - because I have a longstanding food blog (jennybakes.com) and I spent several years in various restaurant jobs.  Sous Chef was a particularly accurate capture of one day in the life of anyone working in the kitchen of a fine dining restaurant, and really gets the energy and exhaustion on the page.  The day I'm writing this draft, we went to see the movie of Divergent, which is pretty true to the book!

I didn't want to take the space to indicate my feelings of each book on this list.  Please come find me in GoodReads and friend me there.  That is where I keep track of all the books I want to read (which is now over 2k!) and review the books I've read.