Four seems like a reasonable number of new books, doesn't it? Not too many, not too few. Rachel's 'Yates Season posts' were enough temptation for me to finally order Young Hearts Crying off my wishlist (she wrote about it here). I've wanted to read him for a while now and hope to squeeze him in this year (and might just throw all caution to the wind and do it sooner rather than later). Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris seems to have gotten many favorable reviews, though I bought it with a special project in mind (which I shall reveal at a later date). I had to buy Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace after I read the title essay a few weeks back. It looks like fun--flipping through the book the essays have all sorts of footnotes and strange little boxes with lots of information. And I had to throw Sarah Vowell's The Partly Cloudy Patriot in for good measure. This book has come recommended and it sounds very appealing. Although the book is classified as literary criticism, I'm guessing these are still essays?
Now my "more new books" are books that I'm contemplating ordering. The thing is these are books that are not coming out right away. The Book Depository gives deep discounts on pre-orders (and remember that free shipping), so it's hard to ignore them--especially if I know I want to get them anyway. I already am waiting for Katharine McMahon's The Crimson Rooms and Jude Morgan's The Taste of Sorrow to be published.
My current wishlist includes:
Jezebel, Irene Nemirovsky
Henrietta Sees It Through, Joyce Dennys
Kisses on a Postcard, Terence Frisby
The Blue Hour, Lilian Pizzichini
Maidens' Trip, Emma Smith
The Great Silence: 1918-1920 Living in the Shadow of the Great War, Juliet Nicolson
The Heart of the Night, Judith Lennox
Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
The Preacher, Camilla Lackberg
An Experiment in Love, Hilary Mantel
A Change of Climate, Hilary Mantel
I think in every case the book is 53% off the original price. It's really hard to beat getting a new paperback for about $6.00, which is cheaper than our mass market books (and these are all trade size paperbacks). I know I am not the only one to do this. Who else has a severe case of "pre-order-itis"? And what do you have on order (am I missing something good?).