Jenny's Books Added April and May 2015

Somehow I forgot to do this in April but here I am, talking about the books I've added in April and May.

• The Wilds : Stories by Julia Elliott
• Queen Sugar by Natalie Baszile
• Serpent in Paradise by Dia Birkett
• The Girl in the Road by Monica Byrne
• Minnow by James E. McTeer II
• The Wet Collection: A Field Guide to Iridescence and Memory by Joni Tevis
• The World Is on Fire: Scrap, Treasure, and Songs of Apocalypse by Joni Tevis
• Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League by Jonathan Odell
• Bake Happy: 100 Playful Desserts by Judith Fertig
• The Familiar, Volume 1: One Rainy Day in May by Mark Z. Danielewski
• Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
• Where All Light Tends to Go by David Joy
• Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography by Laura Ingalls Wilder

The Elliott, Baszile, McTeer, Odell, and Joy are purchased and signed during the SC Book Festival. I should probably still post about that day.

When I went to Powells in March, I bought two books - the Byrne and the Birkett. The Birkett is for my Oceania reading project and the Byrne I always intended to buy. After I bought it I found out that my review is quoted inside.

The two Tevis books are books I'd read already but wanted to own, and I went to her signing last month.  This is the same Joni Tevis from the podcast, episode 029.

I got the Laura Ingalls Wilder book as a gift from my step-mother-in-law. She had intended to get it for me for Christmas but the first print run sold out and it was hard to find for a while. It is gorgeous and I'm looking forward to reading it, because Little House on the Prairie was a major part of my chidhood.

The Danielewski and Stephenson were purchased on the same day; I'm currently 200 pages into the Danielewski.  Another gorgeous, beautiful book. I've heard the audio makes for an immersive experience along with the print, so I need to check it out.

The cookbook was sent to me because of my JennyBakes blog presence.

I also went on a few galley/ARC request sprees after finishing most of what I had previously been approved to review. There are a lot of great books coming out in the next year and I always appreciate the opportunity to read them early.

• The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler (Netgalley)
• The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katarina Bivald (Netgalley)
• Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal(Netgalley)
• Music for Wartime: Stories by Rebecca Makkai (Netgalley)
• Dark Wine by Beth Tashery Shannon (Netgalley)
• The Star Side of Bird Hill by Naomi Jackson (NetGalley)
• Book of Numbers by Joshua Cohen (NetGalley)
• Words Without Music: A Memoir by Philip Glass(Edelweiss)
• The New and Improved Romie Futch by Julia Elliott (Edelweiss)
• The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth) by N.K. Jemisin (Edelweiss)
• Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome: A Memoir of Humor and Healing by Reba Riley (Edelweiss)
• We Dream of Water by Srdjan Smajić (Edelweiss)
• Sea Lovers: Selected Stories by Valerie Martin (Edelweiss)
• You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost): A Memoir by Felicia Day (Edelweiss)
• Fates and Furies by Lauren Goff (Edelweiss)
• Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert (Edelweiss)
• Writing Across the Landscape: Travel Journals 1950-2013 by Lawrence Ferlinghett (Edelweiss)
• Insomnia: Poems by Linda Pastan (Edelweiss)
• Bream Gives Me Hiccups by Jesse Eisenberg (Edelweiss)
• Browsings: A Year of Reading, Collecting, and Living with Books by Michael Dirda (Edelweiss)
• The Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman (Edelweiss)
• Voracious: A Hungry Reader Cooks Her Way through Great Books by Cara Nicoletti (Edelweiss)
• The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr (Edelweiss)

I have some reading to do! I won't comment on all of these but I will point out that I met Julia Elliott at the SC Book Festival, so she is on this post twice! I used to work with Srdjan Smajić , and this is his first novel, published by Underland Press and mentioned in Episode 21 of the Reading Envy podcast. Three of the books - Karr, Pastan, and Jemisin - are by authors I have read before. One of my work-related reading goals this summer is to read about creativity, and the Gilbert is coming along just in time.