Since moving into a smaller house a couple years ago I’ve been trying not to buy too many new (non e-book) books, but I failed at that this week…It’s book sale week at the local library! Saturday I picked up this nice selection:
(The ones where you can’t see titles are Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann and The Holy Roman Empire by James Bryce). I managed to fit them all on various shelves, but then today I went back with my family and the librarians (who really like us) gave us the $1 per box price a day early and we ended up with this for $2:
(mine are: The Jason Bourne trilogy by Ludlum, Foucault’s Pendulum by Eco, Berlin Game by Deighton, Under the Volcano by Lowry, A Small Town in Germany by LeCarré, 12 Years a Slave by Northup, The Spanish Civil War by Thomas, Billy Bathgate by Doctorow, The Way of Shadow by Weeks, The Quiet American by Greene, The Buried Giant by Ishiguro, The Iron Marshal by L’Amour, and three volumes of short stories from The New Yorker). I guess it’s time to try to cram in another bookshelf somewhere! Which would you read first?
Have you read any Ludlum before? I watched the Bourne movies first, before ever attempting to read them. Beyond the character’s name, the books & movies bear almost no relation to each other. I think I abandoned the 2nd or 3rd one. But his style might be right up your alley.
I’ve never read the Buried Giant, and that title intrigues me, so I know it would be going to the top of the list for me…
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I read the Bourne books quite a while ago and remember enjoying them. They definitely bear very little resemblance to the movies (none at all once you get past book 1), but I appreciated the greater plot complexity of the books…I like a big dose of intrigue in my spy novels.
“The Buried Giant” really caught my eye too and I think I’ll take it with me on vacation in a few weeks. I’ve never read anything by Ishiguro, but know literary-minded people who rave about him.
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I love library book sales! I volunteer at mine which sometimes gives me first dibs on the offerings which is really bad news for my bookshelves, haha. I have that same edition of Catch 22!
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What did you think of “Catch 22”? I see it on practically every “100 books you must read” type list but have never met anyone who said they read it and actually liked it.
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It didn’t make much of an impression, to be honest. I also had to read it for a college course, so I hadn’t picked it up by choice, so that might have biased me.
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