Huge Haul Part 3: The Golden Girls

The last part of the haul! This part is dedicated to the Golden Girls. The oldies but the goodies. The dusty ones.... you get the drift.

I love buying vintage books. They often have so much history to tell. You never know what you come across when flipping through old, used books. I once found a letter a grandmother wrote to her granddaughter. Really cute. If the books are signed by the previous owner I love to look him up online and try and find out who he was. It's so interesting.

The first book in the oldies category is Avalon by Anya Seton. I had never heard of it before but it's seems interesting and I love the cover. The story is set in Anglo-Saxon England, Iceland and Greenland. I really like stories set in viking times so this should be a fun read. 

The next book I got was Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter. It's a story about a group of people sailing from Mexico to Europe. Apparently it's an allegory regarding Nazism and whatnot. This one might be a hit and miss for me, we'll see. 

Coming up next: another London book! This time it's a journal, Boswell's London Journal 1762-1763 to be exact. In this fine journal Boswell tells us, among other things, about when he contracts gonorrhea from his mistress Louisa. Charming read, I'm sure. He also meets Samuel Johnson (nothing to do with the gonorrhea, I hope) and later writes his biography.

I actually found that biography and bought it at the same place I got the Journal but not on the same trip there. Funny coincidence! The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell is one of those old, tiny cute books that have really thin paper and tiny letters. I will probably never read it but I just couldn't not get it! 

Another one of those tiny books is Plays and Players, Essays on the Theatre by Bernard Shaw. Basically just a collection of Shaw's theatre essays. Pretty self explanatory, really.

And now for a real classic. Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell. I have seen the film and it's fantastic so I, naturally, have always wanted to read the book. It's supposed to be really good. The only problem I have is the copy I got is nothing special. But I figured if I liked it I would get a better copy later on. And it was so cheap! 

My first Wodehouse! I have always wanted to get into P.G.Wodehouse but never gotten around to it yet. But now I have a copy of Full Moon so I can get my Wodehouse on! I got this from the same guy that sold me The Passage (see previous post). Really cheap and in good condition, so yay! 

If you were living in Ireland in the late 1800's and early 1900's this next book would almost certainly be on your bookshelf. Knocknagow - or The Homes of Tipperary by Charles J. Kickham was one of the most popular books at that time. It was published in 1879 and you could almost safely say that everyone owned a copy. I love reading facts like these about books and I think this book will be really interesting.

Another biography made its way onto me shelves. The Animals Came in One By One by Buster Lloyd-Jones. Buster was apparently THE vet to go to in England and this autobiography tells of his work and life. It seems to be a really cute book.

Next up: a collection of crime stories. Best Stories of the Underworld was put together by Peter Cheyney. It's basically a collection of short crime stories (the underworld). I'm not heavy into crime stories but this looked cool.

I remember reading the next one in school and absolutely loved it (the only one in my class if I remember correctly) and the film was really great as well. It's Rebecca but Daphne du Maurier. I absolutely love this edition, it's just beautiful. 

And now, the last book. The pièce de résistance. The Works of Lewis Carroll. This thing is massive and contains not only stories but also games and puzzles. I have never read anything by Carroll so I can't wait to sink my teeth into this one!

Phew! That was long. This is the end of this haul but there will be more!
I really hope you liked it.

Huge Haul Part 2: The Slightly Used But Still Kinda New Ones

Yes, that is the name for Part 2.
This post will be slightly longer than the first one. I got all of these books (except for one) from a second hand/antique book store I sometimes go to. I can't let my self go there too often because I go kinda crazy in there and I just don't have the space for all the books I could buy from there. First world problems, eh?

Anyway, on to the books.

The first book is a little water damaged but that has never stopped me buying a book. It is The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch. I have never read anything by Iris Murdoch but I have known of her for years, ever since I saw a TV movie about her when I was very young (don't know why I still remember). So I'm excited to read this.

The next book is the only book I didn't get from the second hand book store. It is The Passage by Justin Cronin and I got it from a guy in a book swap/selling Facebook group. I was so glad when I saw it on there because I bought the second book in The Passage series earlier this year without realizing it was a sequel. So annoying when that happens, isn't it? Anyway, I was just so glad I didn't need to order it online or anything. The only thing that I don't like is that it doesn't match the other book (The Twelve). Oh, well. I can live with it. Hopefully.....

I got two autobiographies (kinda). The first one is Paula by Isabel Allende. It is Allende's writings from when her daughter was in a coma. It will likely be a hard thing to read about but interesting.

The other one is A Life of Privilege, Mostly by Gardner Botsford. It is a WW2 related autobiography so I'm excited!

On to more fiction. I got a book called A Widow for One Year by John Irving. Never heard of it before and never read anything by Irving but it looked good and it was cheap. Don't really need any other reason to buy a book....

Now, this next one I'm really excited for. It is The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent. It's an historic novel about the Salem witch trials. I have always been fascinated by this topic so this book should be right up my (Diagon) alley.

OK, I love silly things and when I saw this book I just felt giddy! The Fourth Bear is a second book in the Nursery Crimes series by Jasper Fforde (yes, Nursery Crimes). It's basically a crime novel about DCI Jack Spratt who is the head of the Berkshire Nursery Crime Division. The Nursery Crime Division handles cases involving nursery rhyme characters and other PDRs (persons of dubious reality). How fantastically silly does that sound? It just makes me chuckle.

The next book was definitely one of those "buy for the sake of buying" kind of things. Although I love London and everything to do with London I highly doubt I will ever read this book. It is The City of London Volume 1: A World of its Own 1815-1890. It looks a bit too political to be honest but whatever, It was real cheap and it has London in the title. Yes, that is all I need.

I have one more book for this post and it is another history books. British History by Rodney Castleden is a chronological dictionary of dates. So it basically lists everything (everything noteworthy, that is) that happened each month of each year from 8000 BC to 1991 (when the book was published). It will come in handy one day, I'm sure (I say that about most books to justify buying them).

That is it for part 2. Stay tuned for part 3, it will be a blast!

Huge Haul Part 1: The New Ones

Here is Part 1: The New Ones.

I don't have many new books in this haul, like I said in the previous post most of the books come from a second hand store. But I did go to a sale the University Book Shop was having a few weeks ago.

I got three books in the sale. The first one jumped at me and demanded to be bought. I mean, it's Michael Caine! I love biographies (auto or not) and this one seems like a winner.

The next book is really interesting (to me anyway). It is called Execution: A Guide to the Ultimate Penalty by Geoffrey Abbott. It is basically a book on all the different ways people have been executed through history. A charming read, I'm sure.

The last book I got in the sale is The Girl With Glass Feet by Ali Shaw, a book about a girl who is slowly turning into glass.  I had never heard of it before but it looked intriguing and the cover is beautiful.

The fourth book in this part is from the book fair I went to earlier in the spring. I got quite a few books there but this one is the only new one (all the others were second hand). It is the Icelandic translation of the book Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demrick. It tells of the lives of people in North Korea and seems really interesting. I have been interested in North Korea for a while now so I really have to get around reading this one.

All right, that is the end of part one. Part two should be up soon and it will be a lot longer than this one. So stay tuned!