for your eyes only

I got suckered into another book club -- all hardcover, 6 for $1 then 1 at half price, only 3 to buy in the next 2 years, etc.

I mostly found books that have only been on my wishlist for a week or so, making this some sort of twisted instant-gratification exercise:

* The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

* The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman

* Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

* The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco

* Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

* Specimen Days by Michael Cunningham

and * The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

All those hardbacks for only $24. I love online book clubs. Because I'm going to buy more than four books in the next two years anyway, so it's not like I'm spending money I wouldn't normally spend. Might as well get the almost-free books. Plus Smart Reader Rewards (blah name, but whatever) has free shipping if you spend $24. Much like Amazon except you can pay by check AFTER receiving your books, which is always a surefire lure for me. I'm not sure why, since Ben has a debit card that I can use, but there you have it.

THEN I went to QPB and took advantage of their buy one, get the rest half off sale. Although I like it better when they combine that sale with the "$24 or more gets free shipping" sale. Anyway, it was time to place my big summer order (I usually do one in summer, one in winter); ignore the fact that a few weeks ago I went crazy buying books for vacation. Here's the haul:

* The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler

* Ariel: The Restored Edition: A Facsimile of Plath's Manuscript, Reinstating Her Original Selection and Arrangement
by Sylvia Plath

* a 6-volume set of Jane Austen books (Persuasion, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma) -- believe it or not, I don't think I had any of these already, although I do have the BBC's Pride and Prejudice miniseries starring Colin Firth on DVD.

* Scribbling the Cat by Alexandra Fuller

* All Over Creation by Ruth Ozeki -- have you read My Year of Meats? You should.

* Case Histories by Kate Atkinson

* Animal Crackers by Hannah Tinti

* a 4-volume set of Ray Bradbury books (Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and The Illustrated Man) -- I've never read Martian or Man, but I was really keen on the other two when I was younger.

and * The Secret Life of Bees and The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd

About $100, not too bad since there are two multi-volume (hardcover) sets in there. I realize this post is excruciatingly boring for anyone who happens in here, but a) I like lists, b) I like books, and c) I like to keep a record of my book acquisitions to look back on later (and probly feel guilty that most of these are still on the TBR shelf).

I really need to get my older books out of storage so that I can do an inventory.

(If only Blogger had post tags. I've been wishing they'd get some for a while. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to have an "acquisitions" or "inventory" tag? I have faith, though, if LJ's got them, I'm sure Blogger will hop on the bandwagon eventually.)