So this is slightly less bad than last month, in that in August there were ten books, and in this there are eight. We do have to remember though that I went so insane on our trip to Norfolk that I had to do an extra Books Incoming post to handle it and if I hadn’t done that, there would be 19 books in this post. Ahem. Anyway, here we have Dream on Ramona Riley and ZomRomCom which were my Saucy Books purchases and From Russia with Love which was my Penguin pop-up purchase and Fishing for Trouble and Buffalo West Wing which I bought in Piccadilly at the same time. That leaves the Spinal Tap book, which was a pre-order from Big Green, Hattie Steals the Show was a purchase and then Chris at the Kennels was a gift. And that’s all of them. Unless there’s one hiding somewhere that I forgot. But I don’t think there is…
Yes I know I only did a Books Incoming post last Saturday. However, it all got a bit out of hand in Norfolk and so I’m back already. What we have here is the result of a trip to Carlisle (which should probably have been on last week’s post, but I forgot to put them on the pile so they got left out of the photo) and then two second-hand bookshops at the National Trusts in Norfolk…
Lets start with the Carlisle purchases, which are top left, the Shaun Levy Ratpack confidential and the Molly Keane. I’ve read Levy’s A Castle on Sunset and have been keeping an eye for his others as he writes in the Old Hollywood/movie adjacent part of my reading interests. The Molly Keane is because she keeps coming up in articles I’ve read and I did like Good Behaviour. Then we have the National Trust haul. And I’m going to start by saying that mobile phone signal in Norfolk was generally not good and was non-existent in the bookshops so some of this was done a little by guesswork. There’s actually one book I left out of the pile because when I had signal I realised I had read it, and there were a couple I didn’t buy because I wasn’t sure if I already had them on the pile (I had a 50 percent success rate on that front). Excluding the Abbey girls and the Dodie Smith, I was buying based on vibes and half remembered thoughts that I have read the author before.
So there is a fighting chance that some of these will be terrible and you will never hear of them again. There’s at least one book here when when I searched for the author on my goodreads page I discovered that I had read them before and not enjoyed it. So there’s a fighting chance some of these could end up victims of my 50 pages and out rule. But they were cheap and I was supporting the National Trust so it’s fine really. Totally fine.
Now lets see if I can control myself for the rest of the month. I don’t think I’ve got any more pre-orders due to arrive in the next few weeks, and so it’s going to be a case of can I keep myself from impulse purchasing in any bookshop I visit, and if I go on a series binge, can I restrain myself from acquiring more. Wish me luck.
Oh this looks bad. Really bad. But it’s not as bad as it looks. Honestly. Let me explain: nearly a third of these were pre-orders, so really they shouldn’t count right? I mentioned the Nev Fountain on Thursday, and the new Dahlia, and I really should have mentioned the Elissa Sussman too, but it came out the same week as the Sarah MacLean. Then the Otto English and the Richard Coles were my airport purchases on the way to Ghana – and were the only books I took with me. Now I was so busy that week that I only read one of them, but that still means that that one is going straight from the incoming pile to the shelf. And A Howl of Wolves is going onto the shelf too because it’s that fourth Sam Clair that you can’t get on Kindle, so really buying it was the only way I was going to get to read it and thus finish the series. And then while I was buying it from Abebooks, I checked what else the seller had that was on my list, because you get postage on a scale if you’re buying more books from the same person, and that’s how/why I got the Jill Churchills. And then finally the Jackie, Ethel, Joan was my purchase in Waterstones last week. So really that’s the only one that counts as an impulse purchase. And that’s what I’m meant to be working on…
Ok, so it’s not quite the middle of the month yet, but it’s close enough – especially as I know there are some pre-orders due to arrive in the next few weeks so I want to get this batch out of the way!
As you can see it’s a modest (for me) haul this month – with two of them (Fear of Frying and The Chow Maniac) already off the to read pile and looking for a new home on the other bookshelves. The Vita Sackville West is also off the shelves for now – as I lent it straight out to mum, who is always interested in Gardens and the Bloomsbury Group. So that just leaves the second Jane Jeffries, The Wombles at Work (which came from the same book fair where I found the Vita book), my pre-order of the new Ben Aaronovitch and 1984 which was an impulse purchase from the Pride Month display at Foyles. And I realise typing this that the new Sarah Adler should be in this photo and isn’t, but as I’m several thousand miles away from home at the moment there is nothing I can do about it so consider Finders Keepers on the list too!
It’s that time again, and this month I have done much better on the restraint front.
So here we have this month’s haul: two pre-orders, one charity shop acquisition, two from Upper Street Books and one pre-holiday purchase. The preorders are the new Taylor Jenkins ReidAtmosphere (special Waterstones edition, signed by the author) and the new Annabel MonaghanIt’s a Love Story, which is already read and off the pile. The Upper Street Books acquisitions are the two non-fiction books, A Waiter in Paris and Sovietistan. The charity shop purchase is The 7-10 Split which was recommended to me as an option for the 50 states challenge at the back end of last year. And the holiday book is the new Plum Sykes Wives Like Us, which I picked because I thought I could pass it on to my sister (also on the trip) after I finished it.
This month’s Books Incoming comes slightly earlier than mid-month, but that’s because the arrival pile was getting a bit teetering and I wanted to sort it out. And some of these have already been read so they can go straight from the pile to the proper shelves, without adding to the pending pile(s).
Lets start with the ones I’ve already read, so that’s Death at the Playhouses which is the sequel to Death at the Dress Rehearsal, then there is A Case of Mice and Murder and The Witching Hour aka the most recent book in the Dandy Gilver series. Then we have a couple more in series that I read: the latest in Ann Granger’s Campbell and Carter series which came out in paperback this week and which I had preordered, likewise the eighth Vinyl Detective, then there are two Follet Valley books, one of Elly Griffiths’ Brighton series, another of the Edmund Crispins as I try and tick that series off, another in the Writers Apprentice series, and the next book in a historical mystery series that I had somewhat forgotten about.
And on the non-series front, there’s Beyond Belief which is non fiction about the Pentecostal church and which I bought after seeing the author pop up as a talking head on a documentary the other week and my two purchases from Market Harborough the other week – A Conflict of Interest which was the purchase in Quinns and the Rosemary Shrager which was the Oxfam bookshop one. That’s the lot, and it’s still too many – the pile next to the tbr shelf is teetering, so I really need to do something about it. And yet I keep getting distracted by re-reads and the NetGalley list. What can I say – I’m a law unto myself!
This isn’t as bad as it could have been. I know it looks like a lot, but four of them are off the pile already because I’ve read three of the Elly Griffiths and the Curtis Sittenfeld are already read and on the normal shelves. One of those Griffiths plus the two Streatfields and the Georgette Heyer detective novel came from that Carlisle trip, the Anne De Courcy came from a trip to Gower Street Waterstones to pick up another Elly Griffiths, the Benevolent Society of Ill Mannered Ladies came from a trip to buy a book as a gift because I have poor will power and then the other two Elly Griffiths were secondhand purchases because I’m on a proper binge as you can tell from the Week in Books posts. And on that basis I expect there will be more of them next month…
Addendum: The willpower has been weak this week. More books have arrive since I took the top photo and as the original photo was already pretty full, I took another rather than restaging (and hauling everything back off the shelves) because if I didn’t it was only going to make next month’s photo even worse…
So here we have the preorder of the new book by Charlotte Stein that turned up on Thursday, another Edmund Crispin and three more Ruth Galloways, one of which is already read and off the to-read pile and onto the “needs to find a shelf for it” pile.
For once I have already read half of these. So they’re not going into the pile – but straight onto the shelves – or in some case to the parents for them to read. Who knew I could do that. Actually it’s probably one of the most me things ever – the mood reader buys books and immediately reads them instead of everything waiting on the shelf. Anyway: the ones I’ve read are the Richard Coles, the Nev Fountain and the second Vicki Delany. The Elly Griffiths is the next for me in the series after I remembered about them when mum’s book club read the first one. And then the other two are cozy crimes I had a read of when I was in Waterstones Picadilly and Gower Street and liked the look of. So not adding too much to the pile but not exactly restrained either!
It’s that time again – my latest batch of book arrivals. So we have one one post Christmas, panicky 50 states purchase that didn’t turn up in time and will get used for this year (The Children’s Blizzard), three purchases in Carlisle in Bookends – including a replacement for my awol copy of Goodbye to All That in the same edition of the original, and a Christmas themed murder mystery bought in January. Restrained really.
A four book haul this Christmas so far, with two from this year’s list, another from my long term wants list because I didn’t know what had been bought already when I got another request for books (and didn’t want to spoil the surprise by asking the people who I knew had bought from it already!) and an unexpected middle grade fantasy which looks really good. I do love a boarding school story. I’m hoping there will be one more to come – but we’ll see! Anyway, the Kennedy-related portion of the to-read pile is replenished as well as the 1930s notables one. And now I can take a look at what might have hit the Boxing Day sales and see what else I would like to acquire…
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 