Today’s Online Book Haul

Today I bought a few books online from Thriftbooks.com.  I thought I’d share with you the things I bought because I had no idea Thriftbooks.com was even a thing. I was thrilled to bits! The books from that site are all used (from what I’ve gathered) and some come from libraries. When you choose a book to add to your cart, you can choose from which source you wish to buy and there is a description to tell you what shape the book is in.  Most of the books are in pretty good shape.  And, unlike Amazon, this site takes Paypal, which is a bonus.

Anytime I search for used books, I look for replacement books first–books to replace books people have borrowed from me and never returned (lol).  Keep in mind that if someone borrows a book and disappears with it and refuses to return it or just doesn’t acknowledge that they lost it to begin with, they’ll never borrow a book from me again. Ever. Common decency and all that.

So, I bought Stephen King’s On Writing. Hardback.  Yeah.

And then I bought Anne Rice’s The Witching Hour.  Not a hardback, but I don’t care.  My first copy wasn’t either.

And then I bought To Kill A Mockingbird. Paperback, same exact cover as the one I used to own.

Very plain cover, but I do love it.

 

And then I bought a book I have never owned. It’s called Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke.  I came across this title in an article I read about a week ago that listed all kinds of science fiction books readers were not to miss.  I hadn’t read it and it was one of the few that I hadn’t heard of.

Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the book:

An alternative history set in 19th-century England around the time of the Nepoleonic Wars, it is based on the premise that magic once existed in England and has returned with two men: Gilbert Norrell and Jonathan Strange. Centring on the relationship between these two men, the novel investigates the nature of “Englishness” and the boundaries between reason and unreason, Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Dane, and Northern and Southern English cultural tropes/stereotypes. It has been described as a fantasy novel, an alternative history, and a historical novel. It overtly inverts the Industrial Revolution conception of the North/South divide in England: in this book the North is romantic and magical, rather than rational and concrete. It can be usefully compared and contrasted with Elizabeth Gaskell’s attempts at synthesising a unitary English identity in her fiction.

Sounds right up my alley, so I can’t wait until my books arrive.  I’ve been searching for summer reading material and that fits the bill perfectly. If you have any suggestions for me, by all means, leave them in comments below! Share titles and authors you love. I’m still searching for reading material.  And, of course, when summer is over, I’m going to be looking for fall reading material, and then winter reading material, and so on.

Peace!

~Rhiannon