Kylie Posted December 16, 2013 Author Posted December 16, 2013 Every time I see the 'Ask a Mod' thread appear in my list of unread content, I immediately get the song 'She's a Mod' stuck in my head. Does this happen to anyone else? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=begMgjEBdAw Hmm, not sure why the video didn't embed. Quote
Kylie Posted December 28, 2013 Author Posted December 28, 2013 Just quickly checking in to say hi and that I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas. I spent 5 days with family and a couple of days with BF, so I haven't had any forum time lately! I was expecting to have a non-bookish Christmas, with the exceptions of the lovely gifts I received from Poppyshake and Frankie, but my brother and BF surprised me big time! BF gave me a gorgeous hardback book called The Library: A World History by James Campbell and Will Pryce. I read a review of it around the time it was released (a couple of months ago) and immediately added it to my wish list. I figured I would never get it though, because it's quite expensive. I never mentioned it to my BF at all, so imagine my surprise when I unwrapped this at Christmas! He has received mega brownie points. Here's a great Financial Times review of the book, and this page shows some of Campbell's favourite photos from the book. I have long drooled over the posters from Spineless Classics, who print the entire text of various books on posters in a decorative way. I've never mentioned them to anyone but was planning to drop some strong hints to BF for my upcoming birthday. But, without knowing anything about how much I've been wanting a SC poster, my brother and his partner bought me Alice's Adventures in Wonderland! It's absolutely beautiful, and I can't wait to hang it (once I decide where!). On the way home from visiting my parents, I visited a great little secondhand bookshop that's housed in a shed in their country town. I snagged 10 books for $20! Yay! I'll put up a list at some stage (along with the list of books I bought in Canberra a few weeks ago). While I was away, I also managed to read another 100 or so pages of Motley Crue's The Dirt. The book is so hard to put down once I pick it up! I'll definitely finish it before the end of the year. Quote
Athena Posted December 28, 2013 Posted December 28, 2013 I'm glad you had a great Christmas! It's wonderful you got some really great gifts . I look forward to see your book list. Quote
lauraloves Posted December 29, 2013 Posted December 29, 2013 Glad you had a great Christmas Kylie. The Worlds Greatest Libraries looks really interesting Quote
Kylie Posted December 30, 2013 Author Posted December 30, 2013 I'm glad you had a great Christmas! It's wonderful you got some really great gifts . I look forward to see your book list. Thanks Athena. Glad you had a great Christmas Kylie. The Worlds Greatest Libraries looks really interesting Thanks Laura. It's a really gorgeous book. Quote
Devi Posted December 30, 2013 Posted December 30, 2013 Love the sound of your gifts Kylie! Glad you had a good christmas Quote
Kylie Posted January 1, 2014 Author Posted January 1, 2014 Time to get this reading log up to date and wrap it up! Here is the list of books I bought in Canberra at the beginning of December (ooh, I didn't realise I had bought so many!): Fiction Ben Aaronovitch Whispers Underground Laurent Binet HHhH Agatha Christie Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories Agatha Christie The Man in the Brown Suit Charles Dickens The Signalman and Other Ghost Stories Charles Dickens Sketches of Young Gentlemen and Young Couples Stephen Fry Making History Kerry Greenwood Cooking the Books Kerry Greenwood Unnatural Habits Patricia Highsmith Carol Patricia Highsmith Those Who Walk Away William Hope Hodgson The House on the Borderland Ken Kesey Demon Box Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter The Long Earth Simon Rich The Last Girlfriend on Earth PG Wodehouse Eggs, Beans and Crumpets Tom Wolfe Mauve Gloves and Madmen, Clutter and Vine Non-Fiction Peter Barber et al Mapping Our World: Terror Incognita to Australia Allison Hoover Bartlett The Man Who Loved Books Too Much Robert Belknap The List Geoffrey Blainey Black Kettle and Full Moon Nicholas Crane Mercator: The Man Who Mapped the Planet Richard Dawkins The Greatest Show on Earth Simone de Beauvoir Force of Circumstance Alain de Botton Essays in Love Leaf Fielding To Live Outside the Law (particularly happy to find this!) Matthew Flinders Terra Australis Helen Garner Joe Cinque's Consolation Paul Glendinning Maths in Minutes AC Grayling Descartes AC Grayling The Mystery of Things Sam Harris Letters to a Christian Nation David Hill 1788: The Brutal Truth of the First Fleet Daniel Kahneman Thinking, Fast and Slow Rob Kaplan A Passion for Books Thomas Keneally The Commonwealth of Thieves Lawrence Krauss Hiding in the Mirror: The Quest for Alternate Realities Niccolo Machiavelli The Prince Patricia Chapman Meder The True Story of Catch-22 John Morgan The Life and Adventures of William Buckley Hazel Muir Science in Seconds Alex Palmer A Literary Miscellany Stephanie Prin Farmer Buckley's Exploding Trousers and Other Odd Events on the Way to Scientific Discovery Simon Rae It's Not Cricket: Skullduggery, Sharp Practice and Downright Cheating in the Noble Game Salman Rushdie Joseph Anton Bertrand Russell In Praise of Idleness Malise Ruthven The Divine Supermarket Oliver Sacks The Mind's Eye Seneca On the Shortness of Life Bram Stoker The Lost Journals of Bram Stoker Daniel Tammet Embracing the Wide Sky Amy Tan The Opposite of Fate Simon Winchester The Alice Behind Wonderland Quote
Kylie Posted January 1, 2014 Author Posted January 1, 2014 More recent book buying: Before Christmas, the Book Depository notified me of a drop in price in a book on my wish list. So I was able to buy Van Gogh by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith for about 60% off. I got it for an absolute bargain! Thanks to Poppyshake and Alan for recommending it. I also received a lovely and intriguing-sound book from Frankie for Christmas (am I allowed to speak its name yet, Frankie? ) One day I needed a pick-me-up, so I went and splurged on a biography I've been wanting for ages: Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. When I took it to the counter, I was told that I had around $11 to spend because of the shop's reward program, so I was able to get the book for about half price! That certainly cheered me up! I also won a competition on Facebook to receive a book called Yours Truly: Cathartic Confessions, Passionate Declarations and Vivid Recollections from Women of Letters, which is edited by Marieke Hardy and Michaela McGuire. The Penguin publishing company was giving away 5 copies to random people, and there were around 1800 entries. I can't believe I won! I visited my parents over Christmas and visited a great bookshop nearby. It's a secondhand shop set up in a barn and I think it's run by volunteers. The best thing is that the books are unbelievably cheap - they are rarely over $3! The last time I had gone, I remember buying an as-new hardback copy of Keith Richard's autobiography for $3. I got just as lucky this time around too: Dawn French Oh Dear Silvia Helen Garner The First Stone Malcolm Gladwell The Tipping Point Helene Hanff Underfoot in Show Business Katharine Hepburn Me: Stories of My Life Frederik Pohl & CM Kornbluth The Space Merchants David Sedaris Barrel Fever Craig Silvey Jasper Jones (to replace a battered copy that I have. This didn't have a price on it so they gave it to me for $1! It looks brand new!) Lastly, I went to a couple of bookshops in Sydney and bought a couple of books: Thomas Keneally Australians, Volume 2: Eureka to the Diggers Bertrand Russell Selected Letters, Volume 1: The Private Years (1884–1914) My goodness, I was a naughty girl in December. Quote
chesilbeach Posted January 1, 2014 Posted January 1, 2014 Kerry Greenwood Cooking the Books Kerry Greenwood Unnatural Habits I will be interested to hear what you think of the these two books, Kylie. I've had to stop reading her Phryne Fisher series, as a chunk of the books in the middle of the series are no longer available over here. I'm not sure why, but it might be to do with different publishing deals, or perhaps awaiting a new edition to tie in with the television series, but I can't get hold of them at the moment, and my library doesn't have them either. Hoping they will be available again at some point, as would like to carry on with the series. The two you've bought are another series she's written, so I've been considered trying them while I'm waiting for the Phryne Fisher ones. Quote
julie Posted January 1, 2014 Posted January 1, 2014 Kylie You certainly have a wide range of books to choose from . You'll never have a subject you can't find someplace on your own shelves ! I also bought the VanGogh book back when Poppy mentioned it ,but it's buried on my Kindle. Someday I'll get to it . Quote
Athena Posted January 1, 2014 Posted January 1, 2014 Wow, that's a lot of new books ! I hope you enjoy them . Quote
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