Friday, August 19, 2011

Friday Finds- Where to Begin?

I've had an extraordinarily good week in books. I won a summer-reading giveaway from HarperCollins that included titles like Tolstoy and the Purple Reading Chair, by Nina Sankovitch, and Before I Go To Sleep by S.J. Watson, among others, I went on a weekend trip to New York that found me visiting six independent bookstores and two Barnes and Noble outlets, and received a totebag's worth of galleys from the wonderful Melville Press, publisher of the Art of the Novella series. On top of that, I made some fun discoveries at my local used bookstore and a couple of nice gifts from my visit to Europa Editions' New York office. Wow!

That's the pile I won from HarperCollins. From Melville House,
  • The Duel, by Anton Chekhov,
  • Debt: The First 5,000 Years, by David Graeber,
  • How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive, by Christopher Boucher, a fiction title that the publisher is absolutely passionate about, 
  • Poetry After 9/11: An Anthology of New York Poets,
  • The Train, by Georges Simenon, part of Melville's Neversink Library series of rediscovered classics, and
  • Nairobi Heat, a crime novel by Mukoma Wa Ngugi.
At the local used bookstore I picked up The Prestige, by Christopher Priest, and The Damnation of Theron Ware, a nineteenth century novel about clashes of religion and secularism, by Harold Frederic. New York's bookstores offered up The Bird Sisters, by Rebecca Rasmussen, The Color Purple, by Alice Walker and Be My Knife by David Grossman.

I have lots of great reading ahead! What are you looking forward to? More Friday Finds here.

9 comments:

Alyce said...

Congrats on your awesome week in book finds! Mine finds were just additions to my long wish list. :)

ImageNations said...

This is a great collection. I followed Sankovitch on her year-long reading, reading most of her pithy reviews/opinions. It was the period that I've just started blogging. I was happy when I saw that she wrote a book out of that.

I've been monitoring Mukoma wa Ngugi's book in our local stores but haven't as yet seen it.

Great reading ahead.

caite said...

I think that I will have to pick up the Patchett.
wow, you had quite the week.

Mystica said...

Congratulations on a wonderful haul!

Nan said...

I liked the movie of The Prestige. Seen it?
I love my Beetle, so I might check out the VW book. :<)
And Simenon, I'm always interested in. I've read far too little.
Want to check out the Nairobi mystery.

Zibilee said...

Oh my, Marie! you've had an excellent week in acquisitions! I really think that a lot of these sound wonderful, and just love that Harper Collins prize pack! Very, very cool!

Sandy Nawrot said...

Holy crap girl. I think my head might explode from the over-stimulation! I only got one book this week, Second Nature, by Jacquelyn Mitchard. I haven't been doing ARCs lately, but I loved Deep End of the Ocean so what the hey.

Amanda said...

O I'm so jealous! I'd love to win Ann Patchett's novel AND go to Europa offices. Lovely!

Trish said...

Very cool. What a week! I think that Harper Collins Nairobi Heat, a crime novel by Mukoma Wa Ngugi, sounds terrific. Also, of course, Tolstoy and Simenon. You go, girl!