Jenny's Books Added September 2014

September was a great month for books I actually spent real money on, buying first editions of books just as they were released.  Actually TOO many authors I like came out with new books in September, so I didn't even get to them all.

I have been waiting for new books from David Mitchell and Darin Bradley for what seems like years. And then I read the hardcover of Chimpanzee and the author sent me the audio play that he handed out at his release party.  (It is now available on the publisher site, and should be on Audible soon too.) I am saving it for my trip to Tennessee on Friday. SOON.

Blameless, Book Lust, and Siddhartha all come from Paperbackswap, although Book 2 of the Parasol Protectorate was lost in the mail and I need to find another copy of it before I can read Blameless.  Book Lust I've read before but this is part of my attempt to create a "books on books" collection. Librarian? Guilty. Siddhartha is just one of the many titles from Penguin Classics that I only want because they are pretty. Surely it is also a reputable book that I would like to read.

The Vietnamese Market Cookbook is a review copy, and I'm looking forward to trying some of the recipes in there (although I need to go to my local Asian market first!).  The two Burroughs and the Bloom were $1 each at a local thrift store.  I'm thinking I'll read them and trade them as they are in good shape!

I have a few other digital review copies up my sleeve so I'll list them below as well.

Blameless by Gail Carriger
Book Lust by Nancy Pearl
Love Invents Us by Amy Bloom
Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs
Possible Side Effects by Augusten Burroughs
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
Chimpanzee by Darin Bradley
Chimpanzee by Darin Bradley (audio version)
The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell
The Vietnamese Market Cookbook by Tran and Vu

Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood (audio)
The Dog by Joseph O'Neill (audio)
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Scott's Books Added, September 2014

 
Bought some books this weekend!

Wayfaring Stranger by James Lee Burke
I've enjoyed all of James Lee Burke that I've read to date. All of them have been Robicheaux books - well written, dark, violent stories about Dave Robicheaux, a cop (ex-cop?) in Louisiana. He's an author who can write beautiful prose. When I bought this one, I thought it was standalone, but Goodreads says it's Book 1 of a series called The Holland Family. I'm 100 pages in, I'm enjoying it but am not ready to call it terrific yet. Not like any Burke I've read to date so far.

Don Quixote by Cervantes
I've been wanting to read this for a long time. Barnes and Noble has these classics - if you buy 2 you get one free. My daughter got Edgar Allan Poe and H.G. Wells, I got Don Quixote.

Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf
Recommended to me by Bryan Alexander, I found this one online and it arrived this weekend. The first paragraph of the description:

The act of reading is a miracle. Every new reader's brain possesses the extraordinary capacity to rearrange itself beyond its original abilities in order to understand written symbols. But how does the brain learn to read? As world-renowned cognitive neuroscientist and scholar of reading Maryanne Wolf explains in this impassioned book, we taught our brain to read only a few thousand years ago, and in the process changed the intellectual evolution of our species.

Analog, November 2014
Next up is the latest issue of Analog Science Fiction Magazine. I recently subscribed again - in print - but my copies haven't started arriving yet. Robert R. Chase has one in here, and the cover story looks interesting.

Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence
I looked for this at the bookstore because Orson Scott Card mentioned it in a column. Mark Lawrence is a research scientist in the Artificial Intelligence field, and this is a fantasy - I think. From what Card said, I expect blurred genre lines. I read the first two pages in the bookstore and was hooked. Love his style.

On the shelf they go!