New Books In - April 2016

The pile was manageable and then I stopped at the Friends of the Library Book Sale for the Greenville County Public Library. I've lived in Greenville County ten years but this was the first time at this book sale. I will add it to my rotation now! I ended up with several memoirs and other books I've been wanting to read, only one I had read previously. I have some other books in this pile from other places, so I will explain more below!

Passages: Africa edited by Antonio Aiello and Billy Kahora
Man with No Name by Laird Barron
The Lost Garden by Li Ang
Bluebeard's Egg: Stories by Margaret Atwood
All Over but the Shoutin' by Rick Bragg
The Last Supper by Charles McCarry
House Rules by Rachel Sontag
The Believers by Zoe Heller
Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands by Chris Bonjalian
A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Towes
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
Faithful Place by Tana French
Broken Harbor by Tana French
The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared by Alice Ozma
The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu
Hold Still by Sally Mann

I recently contributed to a PEN America kickstarter campaign that will work to bring additional translations of literature from other places to our publishing industry. Part of my donation came with the gift of Passages: Africa and the Ang. 

The Barron and the Liu were recent wins in Goodreads giveaways.

The rest are from the book sale - Atwood because I always snag a book by her if I haven't read it yet, the Bragg because it seems like an important southern work, the McCarry because I recently read a book by him and really enjoyed it, the Sontag because it sounded like a memoir that might cover some familiar ground, Heller & Bonjalian because I've always meant to try them, Doctorow because I've read that book a million times but want to own the paperback, French because I read the first one and wanted to keep going, Ozma because it seemed related, and Mann because it was a finalist in nonfiction for the National Book Award in 2015.

Jenny's Library Books Mid-January

I had to post this after our podcast episode about reading goals for 2015 went live, otherwise this pile would have not exactly made sense.  But you can see my reading goals in this pile!  Doesn't January always start out that way, with great commitment to our goals?  Reading goals are no different (although I don't get tired of reading the way I get tired of, say, trying to not eat sugar.)

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
One Foot in Eden by Ron Rash
The Absolutist by John Boyne

The top three books are not related to New Guinea! Ferrante is an author I wanted to read so much she's on my goals list for the year. Ron Rash is the January selection for the On the Southern Literary Trail group in Goodreads, and I'm always trying to read more southern literature. The Boyne is for my in-person book club and possibly the first book I've read set in World War I.  I've started it already so I can pass it on to another book clubber before we meet, because our town only has two copies total.

Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art by Carl Hoffman
The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? by Jared Diamond
Michael Rockefeller: New Guinea Photographs, 1961
Gardens of War: Life and Death in the New Guinea Stone Age by Robert Gardner and Karl G. Heider
The Asmat of New Guinea by Michael Clark Rockefeller

The rest of the books are for my month of reading in and about New Guinea, both sides.  Three books have to do with Rockefeller - the newer book, Savage Harvest, is about Michael Rockefeller's death in New Guinea.  He died there but two of the other books in the pile are his photos and his journals, so clearly some items survived! Gardens of War is meant to read alongside another book I need to request from interlibrary loan, and the Jared Diamond will be quite an undertaking. I've always meant to read a book by him, and this one happens to be about the Danu people in New Guinea. Convenient!