I'm really happy that I saved a few library sale finds to share today as it has been a long week and I'm waning. It's good to have easy posts to fall back on now and again (or more often than 'now and again' as seems to be the case with me lately). Happily tomorrow is Friday, so I have the weekend break to look forward to. So without further ado, here are the rest of my new (new to me anyway) books.
I think I already own a cheap paperback copy of Katherine Anne Porter's Pale Horse, Pale Rider, but I couldn't pass up this lovely Modern Library edition. It contains three novellas: Old Mortality, Noon Wine and Pale Horse, Pale Rider. I'm tempted to see if anyone would like to read along with this one as I have wanted to read it for ages and suspect I will not do so until I get a little push. I love Modern Library editions by the way, especially the smaller ones that fit so nicely in the hand.
I found one lone Virago. George Eliot's The Lifted Veil. I'd never heard of this before. "A chilling tale of moral alienation and despair, this forgotten novella testifies to George Eliot's little-known interest in the supernatural."
A Secret Alchemy by Emma Darwin is about the fate of the Princes in the Tower. To be honest I'm not sure how much the subject matter actually appeals to me, but I've heard good things about the author.
Where I've Been, and Where I'm Going by Joyce Carol Oates is a former library copy, so not very pretty, but it's what's inside that counts, right. It is a book of essays, reviews and prose. I'm very curious about her essays.
It seems like a group of readers got together in the past year or so to read Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus (or maybe I'm imagining that?), so I had to pick this one up. It sounds a little larger than life, but in the right mood that could be a lot of fun.
No explanation necessary for picking up another Maigret novel by George Simenon, Maigret and the Man on the Bench. Is it true that "murders are rarely committed on Mondays"? Why have I not read more Maigret mysteries? Short, good, what's not to love?
I've not yet read any of the Miss Silver mysteries, but I've heard they are good. I found a copy of Patricia Wentworth's The Catherine-Wheel. Cozy mysteries are the best. I can almost guarantee that I will leave a library sale with several mysteries. It's no wonder I have no more room for them on my shelves.
I've read On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan, but to be honest I didn't exactly love it. It was at the time when it was shortlisted for the Booker and I think so many other people were reading it and writing about it that I never had a chance to really make up my own mind about it. I thought this is one that I might like to read again now that lots of time (and many books) have passed and I can see what I really think.
Alan Bradley's The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie sounds very quirky. Another book I meant to read but never got around to. I think he's written a few more since this first Flavia de Luce story.
And Herman Wouk's War and Remembrance looks like a nice, long undertaking. It's a sequel, though, so I suppose I should start wit the first book, The Winds of War. I love historical fiction and I bet this one would keep me busy for a good long while.
Now, you would think I'd be totally satiated when it comes to acquiring books. For a little while at least. But I still have a desire to order a few new books. See yesterday's post. I am trying to resist. I mean it is certainly not as if I don't have plenty way too much to read already.