Recent Aquisitions

[littlerdog.livejournal.com]

I used to get home with whatever books I'd acquired during the day and dutifully update my Goodreads account. Since I trashed and burned my GR account, it's been hard to find somewhere else to attempt to keep track of even the TBR pile. I've tried a few places but none of them seem quite what I'm looking for. Which is, I suppose, another Goodreads. Only with not quite so much author-drama and much less Amazon.

However, in my online peregrinations, I came across the BookTrackr on the Worlds Without End website. It's only for SFFH but it does give a quick utility to make a visual check of what you have and haven't read. Provided you can remember what you have and haven't read (ahem). So I created an account and started turning books green as ones I've read or blue as favourites of the ones I've read. You can also track your reading progress through various lists (eg Hugo winners) if you so desire.

Anyway, in the course of this process I came across a book by Hilary Mantel listed as among the best SFF novels on a list created by the Guardian newspaper. I've seen this list before but if I noticed the Mantel book, it made no impression at the time. It struck me as odd this time around because Mantel is better known for her Booker-prize-winning historical fiction. I was surprised to see she'd written anything in SFF.

It turned out that my dad knew of the book, Beyond Black, and had in fact read it. Disappointing however to discover that he'd read it for his Reading Group, which relies on books borrowed from the local library, and so he didn't have a copy. Book-buying funds are limited (ie they're not infinite) so this was a bit of a bummer.

Then, today, while rifling through the £1 paperbacks in the Works, I found a copy of Beyond Black. This rarely happens to me. I even squeaked. Then I seized it in my hot little hands and required my husband to pay for it.

It would after all have been a shame to have come home with no books at all.

Other books recently acquired include:

What's Wrong With Eating People? by Peter Cave (my husband suspects Chapter 12 will have me incandescent with rage);
Beyond the Cyborg: Adventures with Donna Haraway by Margret Grebowicz and Helen Merrick;
Ancient Civilisations by Timothy R. Roberts;
The Strange Voyage of Donald Crowhurst by Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall;
Life in Ancient Rome by Nigel Rodgers
Caligula: The Corruption of Power by Anthony A. Barrett. A sneaky book that had managed to get itself knocked onto the floor and then hidden under the furniture, to the point where I almost decided I'd imagined buying it.

Comments

[monissaw.livejournal.com]

You acquire more than me :(

[littlerdog.livejournal.com]

Mostly in charity and secondhand shops, or remainder shops like The Works. But yeah.

[monissaw.livejournal.com]

Might have to work on that.

[littlerdog.livejournal.com]

There's always book opportunties around here. I go to the Co-op and come back with a book. I go to a garden centre and come back with a book. I go to the hospital and come back with a book.

[monissaw.livejournal.com]

So that's why I never find any.. You take them all.

[littlerdog.livejournal.com]

My arm is long, but not THAT long.