The Biblio Blogazine

As in I went too close to one yesterday. Close enough that I couldn’t resist stopping by and taking a look around. They are my weakness, pure and simple.

How close does it have to be?

Let’s just say that any store that doesn’t require me to purchase a plane ticket in order to get there, is fair game.

Thus it was yesterday.

I needed this though. I wasn’t able to attend the library sale this month, so I was in full withdrawal by the time I passed through the doors.

I tried very hard to contain myself, and I did admirably. Only six books. And one of them was a book I’ve been wanting to get my hands on for two years. It’s one of the first books I put on my wish list when I began blogging in November of 2007.

As it’s my Blogiversary, I had another reason buy some books – and especially from my library. It felt good to spend money I know will benefit others in my community. A win-win for everyone!

So here is my haul, beginning with the book I have been waiting for all this time:

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

This novel tells of a man called Stephen Wraysford at different stages of his life both before and during World War I. Birdsong is part of a trilogy of novels, which includes The Girl at the Lion d’Or and Charlotte Gray. This book will not be an easy read from what I understand, but it is on the 1001 Book List, which is an ongoing project for me. I have also read good things about the author’s writing. I hope this holds true.

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

According to the jacket:

On what might become one of the most significant days in her husband’s presidency, Alice Blackwell considers the strange and unlikely path that has led her to the White House–and the repercussions of a life lived, as she puts it, “almost in opposition to itself.”

I have seen this reviewed around the blogosphere and am intrigued enough to give it a read.

Balzac And The Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie

Taken from ReadingGroupGuides.com:

In 1971, as Mao’s Cultural Revolution swept over China . . . two teenage boys are sent to live on the remote and unforgiving mountain known as Phoenix in the Sky. When they bargain their way into obtaining a forbidden Balzac novel from their friend Four Eyes, a new and dizzyingly vast world opens up to them. Through Balzac, the narrator discovers “awakening desire, passion, impulsive action, love, all the subjects that had, until then, been hidden” [p. 57]. And when Luo falls in love with the beautiful Little Seamstress, life and literature come together in a passionate romance. Luo and the narrator plot to steal Four Eyes’ suitcase full of books both for their own pleasure and to transform the seamstress from a simple peasant into a sophisticated woman. Their success in doing so, and the unexpected consequences that follow, drive the novel to its stunning, heart-wrenching conclusion.

This sounds wonderful. I can’t wait to read it!

Grendel by John Gardner

This is a retelling of Beowulf from the perspective of the antagonist, Grendel. The novel deals with finding meaning in the world, the power of literature and myth, and the nature of good and evil. (courtesy of Wikipedia)

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk

From the author’s web site:

Twenty-three of the most horrifying, hilarious, mind-blowing, stomach-churning tales you’ll ever encounter—sometimes all at once. People who have answered an ad headlined “Artists’ Retreat: Abandon Your Life for Three Months” and who are led to believe that here they will leave behind all the distractions of “real life” that are keeping them from creating the masterpiece that is in them. But “here” turns out to be a cavernous and ornate old theater where they are utterly isolated from the outside world—and where heat and power and, most important, food are in increasingly short supply. And the more desperate the circumstances become, the more desperate the stories they tell—and the more devious their machinations become to make themselves the hero of the inevitable play/movie/nonfiction blockbuster that will certainly be made from their plight. -Courtesy of Amazon.com

No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

As good old boy named Llewellyn Moss finds a pickup truck surrounded by dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back. When Moss takes the money, he sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic violence that not even the law can contain. (from back of book)

I have two other McCarthy books, one of which is a Pulitzer winner (The Road). The other is the first in his Border Trilogy. Not sure which I will read first, but I think I may start with All The Pretty Horses.

Hope your own book buying experiences have been as fun as mine. I think though I should start saving up for new shelves. The severe bowing I can see from my desk cannot be a good omen. Maybe I should start a pool on when those babies are gonna crack. Hmmm.