What did YOU buy today? March 2021

What? Nobody’s bought any books in March? I trolled a library sale today and for $20 came away with a first edition of I Married Adventure, Little Fires Everywhere, The Story of H, The Electric Hotel, Educated, The Rivers of Water, Heretics: A Novel, The Field of Blood, and A Backpack, A Bear, and eight Crates of Vodka.

I ordered Let’s Go Home and Helen Ward’s Town Mouse and the Country Mouse because I needed them. Got them for free because neither was the quality advertised. Gotta try again.

I'm new to this group, and I'm a bookaholic in recovery :) (covid lockdowns have helped curtail my habit). Couple books, tho, that I'll share here.

I belong to the Life's Library Book club (started by John Green, every 6 weeks or so, I get a new book that is, generally, one I've never read, or heard of.

The selection for March is How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee.

I also picked up More Baths Less Talking, a collection of magazine articles by Nick Hornby

>1 varielle: You are fortunate. Our library book sale is "Closed for the Season."

>4 carptrash: As are ours (Los Angeles). Luckily for the piles of books in my garage, they were still taking donations. :)

Forgot that my next Life's Library selection was on the way.

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid. It appears to be written in 2nd person, should be interesting.

>4 carptrash: The big book sales are out for a while but they keep a trolly or two stuck in the corner for sale. It seems they have donations coming out of their ears during covid and are trying to discretely get rid of a few.

Today I went to my favorite honey hole for free remaindered and/or wounded new books. Came away with The Breaking Point: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and the Murder of Jose Robles, In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Expedition of the USS Jeannette, The Woman in the Window and Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink by Elvis Costello.

My computer access is iffy, but I'm here to confess: 5 books bought, 2 ARCs brought home.

ARCs:
* The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear by Kate Moore (pub 6/21; this is the same topic as The Private War of Mrs. Packard, which I also have)
* Facing the Mountain: A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II by Daniel James Brown (pub 5/21; from the guy who wrote The Boys in the Boat)

The money spent:
* Overcoming Positional Vertigo by Carol A. Foster, M.D.
* Murder at the Mena House by Erica Ruth Neubauer (historical mystery by a relatively local author)
* Because of Miss Bridgerton and The Other Miss Bridgerton by Julia Quinn (historical romances that have been on my list forever to finish my collection of the series)
* MI9: A History of the Secret Service for Escape and Evasion in World War Two by Helen Fry

Items in #8 have been in my possession for days. Items in this message I purchased with a bit of stimulus money today after making a couple of political and charitable donations.

My haul today, fairly planned:
* Fossil Men: The Quest for the Oldest Skeleton and the Origins of Humankind by Kermit Pattison
* Evolving Brains Emerging Gods: Early Humans and the Origins of Religion by E. Fuller Torrey
* The Dig by John Preston (historical fiction about Sutton Hoo)

And these, complete impulse purchases:
* The Big Finish by Brooke Fossey (contemporary fiction -- kudos to the cover designer, who forced me to pick this book up and look at it, which made me read the blurb and decide I'd take it -- I've read Backman and Jonasson and have Groen on my list)
* The Good Shepherd by C.S. Forester (a novel about WWII written relatively contemporaneously)

Two more ARCs and 4 purchases.

The ARCs:
* Freedom by Sebastian Junger (pub 5/21; the author hobos and talks US history)
* The Missing Treasures of Amy Ashton by Eleanor Ray (pub 6/21; contemporary fiction)

The bought books:
* The Love Story of Missy Carmichael by Beth Morrey (contemporary fiction)
* Crossings: A Novel by Alex Landragin ("genre-bending," sort of historical fiction)
* Unsung: Unheralded Narratives of American Slavery & Abolition edited by Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
* The Agitators: Three Friends Who Fought for Abolition and Women's Rights by Dorothy Wickenden

Thanks to a recommendation/review from richardderus, I bought The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas.

Its currently (at least as of the time I type this), $1.99 on Kindle.

Feeling in need of philosophy lately so found How Proust Can Change Your Life st a library sale. Gave blood and got a $10 Barnes and Noble gift card so picked up Wintering.