I've already shared parts one and two and meant to show the last of my new books shortly thereafter, but I kept getting distracted by other things, so the piles have grown a tiny bit. Okay, maybe more than a tiny bit. Most are books I've ordered, a few are thanks to the temptation of the Orange Longlist, a few were found in a local bookstore when I was looking for something else (a likely excuse, right) and a few are review copies I couldn't turn down.
I actually found Steig Larsson's The Girl Who Played with Fire in the supermarket! I never find anything I want (book-wise anyway) at the supermarket, so the sheer novelty meant I had to take it home with me along with the groceries. The Illusionist by Jennifer Johnston is one of those bookgroup books I was so excited to read that I never got around to, but I still look forward to reading it even if I join the discussion very, very late. Hilary Mantel's An Experiment in Love just sounded good and was very economically priced at The Book Depository (you should check out their pre-pub prices if you've not already!) as was Wolf Hall which I have heard so many good things about. After reading this, I am tempted to start reading Hearts and Minds by Amanda Craig right now! Malcolm Macdonald's The World from Rough Stones is the first book in a family saga set in Victorian England. And while Maria McCann's The Wilding seems to be getting tepid (at best) responses around the blogosphere, I am still looking forward to giving it a try.
I've been looking forward to reading Nicola Upson's second Josephine Tey mystery, Angel with Two Faces. I really liked the first book, though not everyone who read it seemed to get one well with it. Normally I question using a real person in a situation like this--as a character in a mystery, but it worked for me. I see there is a third book already scheduled! I think I can thank Nicholson Baker for my purchase of Nancy Milford's Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay. He told the best anecdotes about poets I became instantly curious about them, and I've always thought I'd like to read some of Millay's work. See how one book leads to the next sometimes? Rumer Godden is an author who is a recent find, so I've been accumulating a few of her books (thanks to suggestions of other bloggers-thank you). The River is my latest acquisition. Then there is Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust, which I had to have when I checked the film adaptation out of the library. It turns out that I had already seen it (via Netflix), but had forgotten. Still, I want to read the book. I loved Stefan Zweig's The Post Office Girl as well as Beware of Pity, and as I've wanted more I finally got around to ordering Journey into the Past, which is a novella I hope to read soon. And then there are a couple more very appealing Orange Longlisters: The Very Thought of You by Rosie Alison and The Twisted Heart by Rebecca Gowers. Lastly two bookstore finds: Stephanie Barron's The White Garden, which is a novel about Virgina Woolf (am unsure about it...but will give it a try), and The Last Rendezvous by Anne Plantagenet, which sounds really good. It's another novel about a French poet, Marceline Desbordes. I'm looking forward to reading about 19th century salon life!
And a few review copies have come my way lately, too. I've already started reading Chloe Schama's Wild Romance. And very soon I'll be dipping into Alina Bronsky's Broken Glass Park, Isabel Allende's Island Beneath the Sea (I went through a big phase where I read all her books, but it's been years since I've picked up any of her work, so I'm looking forward to this one), Elizabeth George's This Body of Death (a lot of people didn't like her last book, which put me off reading it, but now I want to quickly get to it, so I can pick this one up--I really like her mysteries, so I'm thinking I'll be inclined to like these two recent books, but we'll see). And Jane's Fame by Claire Harman sounded like fun, so I couldn't pass it up.
Whew, that was a lot of links. As I'm itching to go crack a few of these open, you'll have to excuse me. I think I'm going to have to go read for a while now!