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.

SC Book Festival 2014

I really would like to tell you about my trip to the SC Book Festival last weekend.  My original plan was to go all day both days, but because of the two hour commute each way, that quickly shortened to just part of the first day.  I still wish I had left home early enough to see the great Nikki Giovanni, but I just couldn't get out of the house on time!

I went to several sessions:

"Science and Supernatural in YA Fiction" - Jessica Khoury, Megan Miranda, Megan Shepherd
"A Sense of the Midlands" - Cindi Boiter, Ed Madden, Tom Poland, Randy Spencer
"South Carolina Encyclopedia Guide to Authors" - Tom Mack, Ron Rash, George Singleton, Marjory Wentworth
"Southern Fiction Revival" - Wiley Cash, Jon Sealy, George Singleton
"A Conroy Family Roundtable" - Jim Conroy, Mike Conroy, Pat Conroy, Kathy Harvey, Tim Conroy

More after the jump, but this will be long!