A Return to Malarkey and the Land of the Living

I may have had a little too much fun shopping at bookstores on vacation. But, we'll get to that in a minute. I intended to have a normal posting week, last week, but after I wrote about book covers my cold turned into a sinus infection and I went all Victorian, taking to my bed. I kept trying to get up to unpack, do laundry, etc., but I'd last about 20 minutes and then have to take a 4-hour nap to recover. Boy, am I glad to finally feel like a human, today.

Posts since last Monday Malarkey:

• Bringing Out the Dead by Joe Connelly - book and movie
• Fiona Friday - Taking comfort seriously (cat photo)
• Deep Shelter by Oliver Harris (Nick Belsey #2)
• Belches, Burps, and Farts - Oh, My! by Artie Bennett (children's book review)
• Fiona Friday - It's official (cat photo)
• Thinking Aloud: Comparing book covers and the stories they tell 

Books read since last Malarkey:

• Deep Shelter by Oliver Harris
• The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
• The Hollow Man by Oliver Harris
• The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide
• A Cornish Affair by Liz Fenwick
• The Evergreen Bride (e-book/novella) by Pam Hillman

Recent arrivals:

I know, clearly I've had way too much fun, lately. Only one of the books I've gotten recently has not been a purchase:

• 1963: The Year of Revolution by Robin Morgan and Ariel Leve - from HarperCollins' new imprint, Dey St. Books, for review

The rest are purchases:

• Mississippi: The Closed Society by James W. Silver
• The Hollow Man by Oliver Harris
• The Guest Cat by Takashi Haraide
• South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami
• Ubik by Philip K. Dick
• A Cornish Affair by Liz Fenwick
• A War of Shadows by W. Stanley Moss
• 1914 Poetry Remembers, ed. by Carol Ann Duffy
• London, 1945 by Maureen Waller
• Battle of Britain by Patrick Bishop
• Wilfred and Eileen by Jonathan Smith
• The Hopkins Manuscript by R. C. Sherriff
• Diary of a Provincial Lady by E. M. Delafield

Most of those books have some kind of a story that goes along with their purchase -- why I chose them, where they came from. The Hollow Man is probably my favorite. I had already shopped in 6 London bookstores before I decided I needed to get a grip on the wild goose chase that had become my search for The Hollow Man, which I desperately wanted to read after finishing Deep Shelter. So, I tweeted author Oliver Harris and asked him if he knew a book shop that stocked the book. He recommended West End Lane Books in Hampstead (pictured in my post about book covers) and the store promptly tweeted to let me know it was in their "staff faves". This vacation was a relaxed, wing-it sort of trip with few plans so we managed to fit in a dash over to Hampstead and had a great time both in West End Lane Books and perusing the nearby charity shops, where I also bought A Cornish Affair for a pound.

Currently Reading:

Hmm, haven't settled on anything but I'll probably return to Eleanor Roosevelt's Autobiography, which I opted not to carry with me. In fact, for the first time ever, I carried only one paper book on vacation: The Hobbit. I chose it because it was small and I was craving a classic read. I started reading Child Witch Kinshasa by Mike Ormsby, last night, but I was just drifting off and don't remember a thing. I'll see if it clicks, today.

Movies:

We watched Sleepless in Seattle, this weekend. I haven't seen that movie in ages! I think what impressed me about it the most was Meg Ryan's wardrobe and hair -- so classy, especially for the time period. I still find it every bit as funny and sweet as I did in the 90s.

The only thing I disliked about Sleepless in Seattle (and this has always been true) was the sappiness of the ending, the way Annie (Meg Ryan) and Sam (Tom Hanks) keep looking at each other as they walk to the elevator, hand in hand. "And, the rest of it isn't sappy?" was my husband's response. Haha, good point. My favorite scene has not changed. I still love that moment when Sam pulls down the rolling map in his boat house and says, "Where's Seattle?" to his son, Jonah, then "And, where's Baltimore?" and snaps the map back into place after starting to count the number of states between the two.

That's about all the malarkey I've got, this week. How was your week?

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