April 22, 2013

Birthday Book Haul

Because it was my birthday last week, as well as to celebrate reaching the end of my revision, I went out and bought myself some books at my two favorite local bookstores, Books Inc in Mountain View and Leigh's Favorite Books in Sunnyvale.

Not that I need any more books, or have any room left on my shelves. I'm going to have to do a bit of culling and give some of my old books to the library in order to fit these new ones. And while I expect to read some of these soonishly, others may sit on the shelf for years before I get to them. And, yeah, I'm already in the middle of a couple books on my Kindle right now, and plan to buy a few more recent releases in digital format, but I'm not giving up on paper yet.

For one thing, I love a good cover, so I couldn't resist this watery beauty:

How To Get Filthy Rich In Rising Asia

HOW TO GET FILTHY RICH IN RISING ASIA by Mohsin Hamid, in addition to having a cover that makes me want to dive in, keeps intriguing me the more I hear about it. It's written with the unusual second person narrator and pretends to be a self-help book. I listened to a Fresh Air interview with the author and have come across praise from several critics. I'm looking forward to reading this one soon.

TENTH OF DECEMBER by George Saunders was proclaimed "the best book you'll read this year" by the New York Times Magazine. This was at the beginning of January. That's a pretty impressive piece of hype to live up to, but I do think I'm going to enjoy this short story collection after listening to Saunders interviewed approximately everywhere, including The Colbert Report and Bullseye.

→ A couple of months ago, I read and linked to an essay by Benjamin Nugent and learned about his debut novel, GOOD KIDS. The story sounded entertaining, so I added it to my to-read list, and when I spotted it in the store, I read the first page and decided to go ahead and buy it.

Birthday book haul

→ The folks at Bookrageous, one of my favorite podcasts, have raved repeatedly about MR. PEANUT by Adam Ross, so I've been meaning to read it a couple of years now. I figured if I picked up a copy, that might be marginally more likely to happen.

→ I have been kind of interested to read every book by Curtis Sittenfeld, and she was on my mind because she has a new book coming out soon. The one that appeals to me most is PREP, and when I saw it in the store, I thought it was finally time to give her work a try.

I also ordered another new book that wasn't in stock:

THIS CLOSE is a short story collection by Jessica Francis Kane, author of THE REPORT, which I devoured. I have been hearing good things about it, and I adore the paint-sample cover. (While browsing the store, I was amused to see the same element on the cover of a completely different book.)

When my order comes in, I'll need to go back into a bookstore. And maybe I'll just have to come home with a few additional books.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ John Barnes explains how to Diagnose and Treat Lifeless, Wandering, and Other Problem Dialogue: "In good dialogue, as often as possible, (1) A character makes a demand on another, (2) the other character's response shows that the demand either fails or succeeds, and (3) both characters have a reaction to the way that the demand and response changed the relationship."

2 comments:

Anna Scott Graham said...

A belated happy birthday to you! Beautiful covers. :)))

Lisa Eckstein said...

Thanks, Anna! I just can't resist a nice cover.

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