I've been so bad about new book buying it's going to require not one but two posts. I'll save the rest of the books for next week. I can't decide whether that's a good thing or bad. More books surely is a good thing, but considering I'm having problems finding books I already own, maybe in reality (as I try and find space for these) it is in reality a bad thing. But hey, they're here now, so let me show you what I have.
You probably already know how much I love Ruth Rendell, and as I am reading one of her earlier books I thought I should try and fill out my collection so I bought The Killing Doll, which was published in 1984. This story includes a doll and "the uses to which it might be put". Sounds kind of creepy to me.
Stefanie is to blame for me buying George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones. I don't usually read fantasy stories, but it's always good to try new things. And I do love epic stories that include swordplay. And I hope women get to wield swords, too. Fair is fair.
It's sad when you start shopping for books in the supermarket, but that's where I bought both the Martin and Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra: A Life. I've heard many good things about this--like it reads like fiction, which is a good thing since I can't seem to finish any actual nonfiction books this year. There's still three months left, and a lot can happen in three months.
I didn't realize that Beverly Jensen's The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay is a series of interlinked stories, but I've just been thinking lately how much I like interlinked stories. And this has the added benefit of being set in 1916, part of a period I love reading about.
More Italian literature, Dacia Maraini's Train to Budapest caught my eye a while back. This is a post-WWII story about a journalist writing about the East-West political divide. She's also trying to find out what happened to a friend (her soulmate) from before the war.
Earlier in the summer I read Grace Brophy's first mystery and liked it so much I meant to dive right into her next Commissario Cenni story, A Deadly Paradise. Now I can take my time with it. Hopefully, though, that won't mean it can now languish forever on my reading piles.
Someday I would love to have enough shelf space so that I could sit orderly and alphabetized. Isn't that a nice thought?