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Kylie's Literary Adventures in 2013


Kylie

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Quick update on recent book activity:

 

I received Jared Diamond's The World Until Yesterday in the mail this week. It looks like a fascinating read and, as a bonus, the cover looks and feels really nice. :)

 

I've also been reading Inkheart by Cornelia Funke.

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Inkheart is on my wishlist, I liked the film and have heard great things about the book. I have Inkspell and would've had Inkdeath but I feared it was too heavy to take in my suitcase so I didn't buy it. I'll have to get around to buying the first and third so that I can read the whole series.
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The World Until Yesterday looks interesting, so I went to add it to my Amazon wishlist only to find it was already on there. :doh:

x

I get this quite a bit with adding books to my wishlist, I want to put it on there only to find out it's already there.

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It shows that you both have very good taste in books, I think! I hope we'll all enjoy it when we get around to reading it. I have a few books by Diamond now, so I should really read one of the others first (Guns, Germs and Steel is the one I want to read the most).

 

Inkheart is really good, Athena. It's not quite as 'fantastical' as I was expecting, but I expect that will change.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have had a few new acquisitions in the past week. I've been into the city a couple of times and couldn't resist splurging on a few new books:

 

Martin Amis The Moronic Inferno

Anthony Arthur Literary Feuds

Agatha Christie And Then There Were None

Matthew Inman How to Tell if Your Cat is Plotting to Kill You

Hubert Selby Jr Last Exit to Brooklyn

 

The cat book was a gift from my BF, who found me chuckling over it in a bookstore. I have already read the whole thing (it's a cartoon-type book) and it's hilarious. I've been telling people since I got Jasper that I think he's trying to kill me, and this book proves that I'm right! I shall now start sleeping with one eye open.  :hide:

 

I'm heading to Canberra for the book fair tomorrow! I'm going to touch up all of my lists before I go to bed and try to make sure I have a complete of all my books somewhere so I can avoid buying doubles!

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Frankie, I took both trolleys (of course!) and gave one to my BF. I didn't really think he'd use it because he said he only planned to get 'around 5 books', but he filled his trolley faster than I filled mine! (For those of you who don't know what they look like, the trolleys probably hold around 40 books each.) I thought it was hilarious. We had gone our separate ways to look at books, and about an hour later he came and found me. I heard the trolley squeaking as he approached and it only squeaks when it's overloaded with books. He had a very sheepish look on his face. I was so proud of him! I have converted another person to the book fair! Mwahaha! :D

 

We took one trolley load out to the car each and then went back for more. BF didn't buy much the second time around, but I filled another trolley. I probably could have gone back again, but my feet were hurting (I'd been standing a lot the day before) so we left. They had barely started putting out new books to replace the ones that were being bought, so I probably could have bought loads more if I had stayed longer, but I couldn't be selfish and stay at the book fair the entire time.

 

Frankie, I saw lots of Murakamis the first time I went around the fiction table, but they were the same couple of titles I already had, and they were gone the next time I went around! But you will be very happy with at least a few of the books I found. For starters, I scored two copies of Peter Boxall's 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die! They're different editions, of course. I tried to work out which ones they were while I was there, but the Australian versions are published with different dates (on the inside of one, it lists the dates 2005, 2007, 2008 and 2009 - how am I supposed to work out which edition it is?!), so I couldn't work it out on the spot. It was $10 for the two books, so I figured I'd snap them up and work out the editions later. I have now worked out that one is the original 2006 edition (awesome!) but I'm having trouble working out the other one because it doesn't seem to exactly match any of the lists I have. It has the Clockwork Orange cover, which is usually the original edition, I think, except this one has 'Updated edition' written on the cover, and as I mentioned earlier, it has four different years on the inside.

 

So, here are the non-fiction books I bought. I think at the last book fair I bought many more non-fiction books (mostly auto/bios and books of letters) but there are only a couple of auto/bios this time. I'll post the fiction books when I have a chance to type them up.

 

Andrea Barham The Pedant's Revolt
Andrea Barham The Pedant's Return
Bill Bryson Troublesome Words
Deborah Cadbury Chocolate Wars
Peter Boxall (ed) 1001 Book You Must Read Before You Die (2006)
Peter Boxall (ed) 1001 Book You Must Read Before You Die (2008?)
Simone de Beauvoir A Very Easy Death
Al Franken Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
Joseph Heller Now and Then
Howard Jacobson In the Land of Oz
Emma Jones The Literary Companion
Philip Kerr (ed) The Penguin Book of Lies
Jack Lynch (ed) Samuel Johnson's Dictionary
George Orwell Down and Out in Paris and London
Penguin The Penguin Story
Julie Powell Julie & Julia
Lorna Robinson Ad Nauseum: A Miscellany of Latin Words & Phrases
Jon Ronson The Psychopath Test
Stacy Schiff Vera (Mrs Vladimir Nabokov)
Brenda Walker Reading by Moonlight
Mary Wollstonecraft A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
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Kylie, that sounds like an amazing experience :). When I go to the Dutch book fair, I sometimes end up taking my boyfriends' trolley and adding some of my stuff to it :giggle: (because mine is overflowing by that point). I've never gone around more than once, though. The thought has never occured to me (although it'd mean standing in line twice, though, and remembering what you've just bought)!

 

I have an edition of 1001s Book You Must Read Before You Die, it's very pretty so I can imagine buying two different editions (that price is awesome too, BTW) :). I recently bought Julie & Julia myself at the Dutch bookfair, I haven't read it yet though but I liked the film based on the book. I recognise some other authors and a few of the titles but I haven't got those myself nor read them, so I can't really comment on those. I have to admit, some of the titles do intrigue me. I look forward to see your fiction haul.

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Here are the fiction books I bought at the book fair. Those with an * are books that I already own but wanted/needed another edition, sometimes because the copies I already had were hardbacks or trade paperbacks (both of which I try to avoid), or saw prettier editions.  :blush2:

 

I bought 70 books in all (including non-fiction), and my BF bought me The Little Book of Cats, which is about various cat-related items at the British Museum. :) I think this total may be the smallest number of books I've ever bought from the book fair, but that's not to say that there weren't many more that I wanted - I was just being a bit more sensible this time.

 

Martin Amis The Information
Kate Atkinson Case Histories
*Margaret Atwood The Year of the Flood
Greg Bear Blood Music
Elizabeth Bowen Eva Trout
*Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451
*Angela Carter Wise Children
Michael Chabon The Mysteries of Pittsburgh
Agatha Christie A Caribbean Mystery
Agatha Christie Appointment with Death
Agatha Christie Evil Under the Sun
Agatha Christie Hercule Poirot's Christmas
Agatha Christie The Mysterious Mr Quin
Agatha Christie Partners in Crime
Agatha Christie Spider's Web
Agatha Christie The Unexpected Guest
Jean Cocteau Les Enfants Terrible
Michael Cunningham A Home at the End of the World
Louis de Bernieres Red Dog
Fyodor Dostoevsky Notes from Underground
*Daphne du Maurier Rebecca
Gillian Flynn Gone Girl
Dawn French A Tiny Bit Marvellous
*Stephen Fry The Liar
Stephen Fry The Stars' Tennis Balls
*Neil Gaiman Smoke and Mirrors
Ricky Gervais Flanimals
Kerry Greenwood Phryne Fisher #5: The Green Mill Murder
Kerry Greenwood Phryne Fisher #15: Death by Water
Kerry Greenwood Corinna Chapman #2: Heavenly Pleasures
Kerry Greenwood Corinna Chapman #4: Trick or Treat
Kerry Greenwood Corinna Chapman #5: Forbidden Fruit
Stephen King 11.22.63
*Hugh Laurie The Gun Seller
David Malouf The Complete Stories
Spike Milligan The Compulsive Spike Milligan
Margaret Mitchell Lost Laysen
Nancy Mitford Pigeon Pie
Tea Obreht The Tiger's Wife
*Francois Rabelais Gargantua and Pantagruel
Craig Silvey Jasper Jones
*Betty Smith A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
*JRR Tolkien The Fellowship of the Ring
Voltaire Candide
*Kurt Vonnegut Cat's Cradle
Kurt Vonnegut Sirens of Titan
HG Wells The Country of the Blind and Other Selected Stories
HG Wells Mr Britling Sees it Through
Scott Westerfeld Leviathan #2: Behemoth
 
 
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Kylie, that sounds like an amazing experience :). When I go to the Dutch book fair, I sometimes end up taking my boyfriends' trolley and adding some of my stuff to it :giggle: (because mine is overflowing by that point). I've never gone around more than once, though. The thought has never occured to me (although it'd mean standing in line twice, though, and remembering what you've just bought)!

 

I have an edition of 1001s Book You Must Read Before You Die, it's very pretty so I can imagine buying two different editions (that price is awesome too, BTW) :). I recently bought Julie & Julia myself at the Dutch bookfair, I haven't read it yet though but I liked the film based on the book. I recognise some other authors and a few of the titles but I haven't got those myself nor read them, so I can't really comment on those. I have to admit, some of the titles do intrigue me. I look forward to see your fiction haul.

 

I think you and I would have a great time together if we want to a book fair, Athena! :D We would have to take maybe several trolleys though. :o Is your BF a big reader too?

 

Luckily the line at Canberra moves very quickly, so that isn't too much of a problem, but I did once buy the same book twice in one day! I always go through my books before I buy them to make sure that I *really* want them (sometimes I just get carried away by the excitement of it all and put books in my trolley that I don't want particularly badly). So anyway, I once put back a large hardcover autobiography, thinking that I shouldn't get it because I don't really like hardbacks. I bought the rest of the books and then went back in for more. I was then excited to find a smaller paperback version of the same autobiography, so I snapped that up. I think it was only when I got home that I realised I hadn't actually put back the hardback like I thought I had!  :giggle2:

 

The 1001 Book is definitely very pretty! And yes, it was very hard to resist the second edition when I saw how cheap it was. Even when I combined the prices for the two editions, it still came out at only around one-third of the price that it would have cost for just ONE edition! And they both look practically brand new. :D

 

I knew that Julie & Julia was also a movie, but I've never been particularly interested in watching it or reading the book (maybe because I don't like cooking, although I know that it's more than about cooking), but I must admit that the cover for it was so lovely that I just couldn't resist. I've obviously been hanging around Poppyshake too long!  :giggle:

 

Kylie, your book fair sounds fantastic! 

 

We have the revised and updated 2010 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die.  Gorgeous, Hardback.  HEAVY!

 

Yes indeed! I have the paperback versions but they are still very heavy! :o

 

Oh, I forgot to mention that the place we were staying at in Canberra was on the third floor, and there was no lift! Usually I take my books into the hotel room at the end of the day so I can 'play' with them (catalogue them, look at them etc) but I figured I wouldn't be able to because I didn't want to even attempt lugging them up so many stairs. But then my BF said he was going to take his up, so I couldn't leave mine behind! OMG, it was so hard getting those books up the stairs. I had two canvas bags full of books and my trolley, which was full as well. Initially I tried dragging the trolley up the stairs on its wheels, but it just didn't work, so I had to carry the damn thing all the way up! And I'm already very unfit. :( I'm sure it would have looked pretty funny to anyone watching. The things we do for books! :D

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Hi Kylie your posts are a total hoot! I didn't know you had a new BF..that was so funny about him buying so many books. Good haul..there is only one I am very jealous of though it is the Mary Wollstonecraft book she was so far ahead of her time..I must get hold of that one.

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Only someone .. as bookishly mad as we are .. would think that 70 books was 'being sensible' :D :D :D

Love your list Kylie .. some great books there (well all of them are .. I'm sure :)) I see you bought Red Dog .. awwwww :blush2: lovely doggy tale.

Sounds like you had a great time .. I can picture you chugging up that stairwell with all your books :D .. but you did the right thing. If your BF had started going through his books and you had left yours downstairs .. that would've been too sad :( No pain no gain as they say. It gave you time to look at them and lick them etc .. that's what I would've done too :D

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Hi Kylie :friends3:  I'm going to go through older posts and catch up, but just so I won't forget, I'm now going to post this one particular (and peculiar) video link to you. Ex showed it to me the other day and said I have to show it to you, too :D

 

Here you go :cool:

 

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Jeffrey Eugenides My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead

Is this a new book by him? :o I had no idea!

 

Homer The Iliad

Oh boy, this'll be a helluva read, me thinks :D

 

Oscar Wilde De Profundis and Other Prison Writings

 Hehe, I have this on my wishlist thanks to poppyshake. I hope you enjoy it! :)

 

 

I'm planning on going to the Canberra bookfair next month. Last time I bought around 112

 

 

  :D :D :D This cannot be a coincidence... Do you know what 112 means over here? It's the emergency phone number, the equivalent to US's 911 :D You needed help, woman! :giggle:

 

 

 Mary Elizabeth Braddon Lady Audley's Secret

 Oooh, jealous, me! :blush:

 

 Tom Wolfe Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers

 Did he ever write a book with a normal title :D

 

 Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (had this on my wish list for a while)

 I really want to read this one, too, some day. Should be interesting... :hide:

 

I received a book in the mail today:

 

PG Wodehouse A Life in Letters

 

 

Oh I know you're just going to love this one :D

 

Frankie, I took both trolleys (of course!) and gave one to my BF.

 

 

Oh... I must say, I felt a stab in my heart :blush: The book trolley I used, when I was living with you, and now it's passed on to your BF... I'm so jealous! :blush:

 

I'm really happy you had such a great time at the book fair, though :friends3:  I know how much it means to you!

 

Frankie, I saw lots of Murakamis the first time I went around the fiction table, but they were the same couple of titles I already had, and they were gone the next time I went around!

 

 

Hehe, I remember us talking about Murakami... You were the one who initially found all them books and I was so jealous, and later on I happened to check that particular table and found so many of them, and then you were jealous... But of course we were both so happy for each other. Remember how you found a book titled Frankie?

 

I miss Australia :( I miss you. I can't believe it that at this time, 3 years ago, I was over there!! The best 2 months of my life :friends3:

 

But you will be very happy with at least a few of the books I found. For starters, I scored two copies of Peter Boxall's 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die! They're different editions, of course. I tried to work out which ones they were while I was there, but the Australian versions are published with different dates (on the inside of one, it lists the dates 2005, 2007, 2008 and 2009 - how am I supposed to work out which edition it is?!), so I couldn't work it out on the spot. It was $10 for the two books, so I figured I'd snap them up and work out the editions later. I have now worked out that one is the original 2006 edition (awesome!) but I'm having trouble working out the other one because it doesn't seem to exactly match any of the lists I have. It has the Clockwork Orange cover, which is usually the original edition, I think, except this one has 'Updated edition' written on the cover, and as I mentioned earlier, it has four different years on the inside.

 

 

So odd that you haven't been able to work out what edition the other book is!! :o Like, what the hell???

Edited by frankie
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I have to say, all in all, what a splendid book fair for you :D And I was happy to hear your BF was so eager at the book fair, and that he filled a trolley :D (And I'm sorry if I sounded like a grumpy butt before, I'm just sad I wasn't there. I'm really happy that you had such a great time!! :kissing: )

 


Andrea Barham The Pedant's Revolt
Andrea Barham The Pedant's Return

Okay, so what is this deal? :) Although I guess we had it coming: the other person not knowing (:o) what was the story behind buying certain books.


Bill Bryson Troublesome Words

Are you going to help Bryson with the difficult words? :giggle2:


Simone de Beauvoir A Very Easy Death

Wohoo, de Beauvoir! :)


Al Franken Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them

!! I don't remember why, but I have this on my wishlist. Do you have any idea why?


Julie Powell Julie & Julia

Do you like Meryl Streep? She's in the movie :shrug: Oh, remember how you and I talked about how you like Isla Fisher, and I like Amy Adams? Well Amy Adams does a great job in this movie. Although I had no idea it was Amy Adams, she has such a different haircut and of course she does a great job being not-like-her-own-self.

 

I really liked the movie and would recommend it. But I only watched it because of Meryl Streep :shrug: So if you're not a fan of her or Adams, maybe it's not for you.

 

Jon Ronson The Psychopath Test

I'm so happy you got this, because I remember you were jealous when I borrowed this from the library! :D (I didn't read the book :blush:)

 

 


Kate Atkinson Case Histories

This is a great one, I hope you enjoy it! :)


Michael Cunningham A Home at the End of the World

Oh!! Hehe I remember how you and I just talked about this... I'm still happy you found the book, and I really, really hope you like it!!! :)


Louis de Bernieres Red Dog

Son of a gun, I'm really jealous!!! :D


Kerry Greenwood Phryne Fisher #5: The Green Mill Murder
Kerry Greenwood Phryne Fisher #15: Death by Water
Kerry Greenwood Corinna Chapman #2: Heavenly Pleasures
Kerry Greenwood Corinna Chapman #4: Trick or Treat
Kerry Greenwood Corinna Chapman #5: Forbidden Fruit

:D Oh dear, I should go and see how much the first book in the Phryne Fisher series is... I could now actually afford buying a copy...

 


*Francois Rabelais Gargantua and Pantagruel

Nice!!! :)


Voltaire Candide

I can't wait til you read this.... :giggle2::D It's so out there!! 

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I think you and I would have a great time together if we want to a book fair, Athena! :D We would have to take maybe several trolleys though. :o Is your BF a big reader too?

x

I'm sure we would have an awesome time :D. I think we would, yes :P. The only problem would be for me how to get the books back to my country. My BF isn't a big reader, but he likes coming with me to a bookfair and seeing me happy. He normally picks up a couple of books if they have something he likes. He's mainly interested in history books, manga, alternate history books (fiction or non-fiction), and some fiction reads. I don't mind that he's not as big of a reader as I am, I think it's nice we have our own things (I tell him about my books and he tells me about the things he does). He spends more time modding, playing games and watching TV shows or films. He also likes to make plastic models, such as a modelkit of a plane he's interested in. Most of the time though he spends modding, it's kind of like making a computer game based on someone else's engine. He spends quite a bit of time making graphics for it, sometimes he does coding (ini coding).

 

Here's an image of what he's been working on recently. He's been working on creating a 3D model of the Reichstag, a German building (with much more detail than needed for his game):

 

reichstag14.png

 

Luckily the line at Canberra moves very quickly, so that isn't too much of a problem, but I did once buy the same book twice in one day! I always go through my books before I buy them to make sure that I *really* want them (sometimes I just get carried away by the excitement of it all and put books in my trolley that I don't want particularly badly). So anyway, I once put back a large hardcover autobiography, thinking that I shouldn't get it because I don't really like hardbacks. I bought the rest of the books and then went back in for more. I was then excited to find a smaller paperback version of the same autobiography, so I snapped that up. I think it was only when I got home that I realised I hadn't actually put back the hardback like I thought I had!  :giggle2:

x

:giggle2: oops! That sounds like something that could've happened to me! Sometimes they have two different editions of books at the Dutch book fair, and I tend to swap too if I find a prettier or nicer edition. It's not happened to me though that I forgot to put the book back. It has happened to me that I thought I put a book back but I didn't and so ended up buying it (but I didn't have it yet so it wasn't a big problem, I was somewhat interested in it, just not as much as in some other books I'd bought).

x

The 1001 Book is definitely very pretty! And yes, it was very hard to resist the second edition when I saw how cheap it was. Even when I combined the prices for the two editions, it still came out at only around one-third of the price that it would have cost for just ONE edition! And they both look practically brand new. :D

x

That's so awesome ^_^.

x

I knew that Julie & Julia was also a movie, but I've never been particularly interested in watching it or reading the book (maybe because I don't like cooking, although I know that it's more than about cooking), but I must admit that the cover for it was so lovely that I just couldn't resist. I've obviously been hanging around Poppyshake too long!  :giggle:

x

I hope you enjoy the book. The film at least (book is on TBR) isn't just about cooking. :giggle: maybe!

Oh, I forgot to mention that the place we were staying at in Canberra was on the third floor, and there was no lift! Usually I take my books into the hotel room at the end of the day so I can 'play' with them (catalogue them, look at them etc) but I figured I wouldn't be able to because I didn't want to even attempt lugging them up so many stairs. But then my BF said he was going to take his up, so I couldn't leave mine behind! OMG, it was so hard getting those books up the stairs. I had two canvas bags full of books and my trolley, which was full as well. Initially I tried dragging the trolley up the stairs on its wheels, but it just didn't work, so I had to carry the damn thing all the way up! And I'm already very unfit. :( I'm sure it would have looked pretty funny to anyone watching. The things we do for books! :D

x

Wow, that's very good that you managed to do that!! It can be difficult, lifting all the heavy books. Usually I have my BF with me and he carries the suitcase for me :D. Once I went on my own (BF had gone back to UK), and had to carry it all by myself (one small suitcase, my uni bag and two plastic bags), this was in Utrecht so I had to go from the area where it was to the train station, in the train and then in Eindhoven change trains. Gladly my mum was home and she offered to give me a lift from the train station nearby to here (would've had to walk otherwise). The next book fair I can go to easily is in Eindhoven just after my birthday, at the end of October, beginning of November, so I'm excited for that.

 

I'm really glad you had an awesome time at the book fair :D! I googled and it shows me it's three times a year :o. Do you go to all of them? Is it far from where you live?

 

P.S. I would totally like going there but there's a 8-11 hour time difference with Australia and I'm not sure how my body would cope with it (I do want to travel to several more countries in my life though, that have a bigger time difference). Also I'd probably have to post the books to myself in NL because there's no way I could take them all in my suitcase :P.

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Quick reading update:

 

I finished reading Inkheart, which was jolly good but not quite up to my expectations. I felt it was rather long for the relatively few events that took place. I was expecting it to be more fantasy-oriented (my own fault)...I thought it involved going to another world - not just talking about it. Still, a good book, and I'll continue with the others in the trilogy, but not for a while.

 

I started reading Comet in Moominland by Tove Jansson again, which I started reading several months ago but then put down (no fault of the book). I read a few chapters and then fell asleep with it in bed. When I woke up the next morning, I couldn't find it. Hmph. So while the search continues for my book, I've picked up another book that I've desperately wanted to read for a long time (Frankie will be very pleased): The Dirt by Motley Crue. I've heard so many awesome things about this book, and 30 pages in, it's living up to my high expectations. It's hard to put down! I have absolutely no interest in the band or its music, but you don't need to be interested in them to find this book incredibly entertaining.

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