Monday Malarkey - 2 weeks of malarkey and a touch of green

Clearly, I still don't feel much like writing about books. I keep thinking, "I need to write some reviews," and then not doing it. So, I'm going to keep this short and see what I can come up with, review wise, later.

The photo above shows most of my library sale purchases from last week. This is the first time I've made it to a library sale in my new town and it was surprising. The room in which the book sale was held was a very small one but the quality of the books (the shape they were in) was excellent. I used a photo that cut off a couple of the book covers because I love using a photo with a cat in it and this just happened to be the only shot I got of Isabel sniffing covers. My battery ran out right after I snapped that image.

Library sale purchases:

• Picture Machine: The Rise of American Newspapers by Wm. Hannigan and K. Johnston
• First into Nagasaki by George Weller
• Sea of Thunder by Evan Thomas
• Whiter Than Snow by Sandra Dallas
• Up in the Air by Walter Kirn
• Oh, Play That Thing by Roddy Doyle
• The Foreign Correspondent by Alan Furst
• Blindness by Jose Saramago

Other recent acquisitions:

• Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman - from Harper Collins (William Morrow imprint)
• The Trip to Echo Springs: On Writers and Drinking by Olivia Laing - purchased for F2F discussion
• A Dozen Cousins by L. Haskins Houran & S. Usher - from Sterling Children's for review

Library check-outs:

• The Wind is Not a River by Brian Payton
• Left Neglected by Lisa Genova (I was actually looking for Still Alice)
• Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys
• Just One Day by Gayle Forman

I went to the library in search of Still Alice, Brutal Youth by Anthony Breznican, and The Trip to Echo Springs. I didn't find any of them so I had to go ahead and purchase Echo Springs, since F2F group is coming up soon. There is a copy of Brutal Youth in my library system. I could request it from the other library branch but I'd rather go on an adventure and find the building, just for the fun of it. So, that's on my future agenda. And, I'm hoping Still Alice will be available in e-book form (my new library system has e-books!!!!) but I have to go get a pin # before I can download e-books. Adventure #2!

I've only posted once since my last malarkey:

• Three I loved: The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt, 1963: The Year of Revolution by Morgan and Leve and Entertaining Judgment by Greg Garrett

Books I've finished in the past two weeks:

• Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick
• A Dozen Cousins by Lori H. Houran, illus. by Sam Usher
• Anneville: A Memoir of the Great Depression by Thomas G. Robinson
• The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
• In the Loyal Mountains by Rick Bass (short stories)

Currently reading:

• The Trip to Echo Springs by Olivia Laing
• The Lakota Way by Joseph M. Marshall III
• Quiet by Susan Cain

I'm also still reading Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford because I only occasionally pick it up, read 50 pages or so, and then set it aside for a week. The wonderful thing about Parade's End is that you can do that . . . it's so memorable that it's no big deal to just read a chunk, once a week. Since it's going to take me forever to read, I'm not going to mention the book, again, till I finish.

It's gorgeous, here -- in the 70s, the windows thrown open, cats happily sitting on windowsills. We have little sprouts coming up. 2 or 3 weeks ago, we dug up our front garden, planted a ton of bulbs, and put down new mulch but we worried they wouldn't do well because they didn't have the chance to winter over. Looks like everything has done fine. Green is popping up everywhere. I can't wait till things begin blooming. I realized, a year after we moved, that the one thing I cannot bear to live without is daffodils -- and the former owners had planted daylilies but no other bulbs. There are daffodils blooming already in our neighborhood so I'm really excited to see mine breaking through the mulch.

That's all for now! Hope to whip out some reviews, this week. We shall see. Happy Monday!

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