What did YOU buy today? June 2021

Wandered into DollarTree and came away with The Sea Beast Takes a Lover and Autumn.

I succumbed to a display of miniature books I saw on Instagram and bought several titles from three different Etsy dealers. Bad Internet!
The first arrived yesterday. Gardening for Beginners. The plates are in color and the text is readable. I am very impressed.

8 days in and I've brought home 2 ARCs, returned a book bought in May, and bought 4 books.

The ARCs:
* Raft of Stars by Andrew J Graff (pub 3/21; no one grabbed this thriller set in Wisconsin, so ...)
* She Wouldn't Change a Thing by Sarah Adlakha (pub 8/21; contemporary fantasy of the Peggy Sue Got Married type)

The purchases, one of which was a total impulse buy, and one of which was a print-on-demand title I ordered in May which never came, so I did a prepaid order for it instead:
* American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783 - 1850 by Alan Taylor (I couldn't resist the beautiful cover, but also I own another of his titles)
* The Confidence Men: How Two Prisoners of War Engineered the Most Remarkable Escape in History by Margalit Fox (total impulse based on the fascinating topic; 2 UK prisoners in Turkey in WWI)
* The Year of Peril: America in 1942 by Tracy Campbell (we call them the Greatest Generation now, & popular culture painted a picture of everyone pulling together, but apparently there were people then who, like today's anti-maskers and anti-vaxers, were unwilling to take on the individual responsibility they owed to their community. For the last year I've been pointing to aspects of WWII, not to mention the 1918 pandemic, as a picture of how people SHOULD behave, but I've been looking through rose-colored glasses apparently)
* The Weaver's Revenge by Kathleen Ernst (mystery series with historical aspects; her current publisher is print-on-demand so I did a prepaid order for it when my order to the store didn't fill)

Sent to me for my birthday, Fierce Bad Rabbits. It’s a reflection on children’s picture books.

>ReneeMarie 🤍

Last Friday (June 11) I stumbled across a fabulous train station bookstore in Mannheim, Germany.
It was really well-stocked and featured many books I had not heard about before,
plus a gorgeous Japan-themed display with books, fans and stationery.

Got myself Nick Bradley's The cat and the city as well as a georgeous illustrated hardcover edition of
Lafcadio Hearn's classic Japanese Ghost Stories

>5 Yuki-Onna: :-)

Tomorrow I'll be buying my July history book group title: An Edible History of Humanity by Tom Standage. Got it interlibrary loan and didn't finish it before I needed to return it, but read enough that I know I'll enjoy it.

And 3 ARCs:
* Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr (pub 9/21; historical fiction set in multiple time periods and about the future of the earth)
* The Reading List: A Novel by Sara Nishi Adams (pub 8/21; contemporary fiction)
* Sisters in Arms: A Novel by Kaia Alderson (pub 8/21; historical fiction set in WWII)

Although I put back two books I was going to buy today, a couple of days ago I did not put back 3 books, so now I own:

* _Selected Works_ by Frederick Douglass
* Common Sense and Other Works by Thomas Paine
* _The Gettysburg Address & Other Works_ by Abraham Lincoln

My favorite bookstore: https://www.librarything.com/venue/20/Seminary-Co-op-Bookstore re-opened for in-store browsing/buying on June 11. I couldn't get there that day, but the next day, I went and bought:

Two memoirs of Renaissance Florence : the diaries of Buonaccorso Pitti and Gregorio Dati, by Gene Brucker
The book of my life, by Girolamo Cardano
Collection of sand : essays, by Italo Calvino
Renaissance woman : the life of Vittoria Colonna, by Ramie Targoff

Then last Friday, I was giving tours at Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House, which is right next door, and having time between tours, I naturally went back again, and bought:

Killing the moonlight : modernism in Venice, by Jennifer Scappettone