New Books In, August 2016

I brought home SO MAN BOOKS in August that they will have to be represented by three photos of book stacks.  Bear with, bear with.

Much of the fault goes to The Really Good, Really Big, Really Cheap Book Sale put on every summer by the Greenville Literacy Association. This year I volunteered as a book sorter, pulling a few shifts throughout the month of July to sort donations that came in. I haven't heard yet how many books were sold, but I know we sorted over 126,000 books, if you can imagine. I was a minor player compared to some people who seemed to be full-time volunteers.

Child of All Nations by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
Footsteps by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
House of Glass by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 by Annie Proulx
A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L'Engle
Time and Again by Jack Finney
Your Face Tomorrow: Fever and Spear by Javier Marías
Old Filth by Jane Gardam
The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

I read the first book of the Toer (This Earth of Mankind) and was pleased to find books 2-4 for $1 each.  I have meant to read some of L'Engle's adult fiction, and the others were all authors I had on my list. Yes, I do bring a list. It helps keep me focused. The Finney was an earlier pick this year for the Sword and Laser book club, one I didn't get to, but hey, for $1, I might still.

I went to that book sale twice - once on the Saturday, where you pay per book, and once on the Sunday, where you pay $10 for every grocery bag. I went earlier on the Saturday than I usually do, so there were more people. This meant I didn't get to look deeply at the non-fiction, which is where I headed on the Sunday! Richardson-Moore is a minister in my town, Nahmad wrote the book I wish I'd lived, and the Kabat-Zinn was to give away!

Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala
The Weight of Mercy by Deb Richardson-Moore
Agent Zigzag by Ben Macintyre
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn
Pilgrimage to Iona by Claire Nahmad
My Sergei: A Love Story by Ekaterina Gordeeva
The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith

Otherwise, I had birthday money that I of course spent on books. Many of the books I ended up with in August are in preparation for my in-person book club. (You can hear more about this book club on Episode 049 of the Reading Envy Podcast.) There are some other random books in this pile - one from a Misfit Reader which I purchased in a weak moment, one Goodreads Giveaway win (the McInerney) and two audiobook review copies from Brilliance Audio.

Salt Creek by Lucy Treloar
The Hamilton Affair by Elizabeth Cobbs
The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester
A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding by Jackie Copleton
The Registrar's Manual for Detecting Forced Marriages by Sophie Hardach
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Skylark Farm by Antonia Arslan
The Plum Tree by Ellen Marie Wiseman
The Seventh Elephant by Alexis Stamatis
The Glorious Heresies by Lisa McInerney

Now that I have finally taken photos of these piles, I can try to find space for them on my shelves.