Sunday I went to the SPL book sale. I had thought that the ones in Portland were large but this was much bigger. Apparently a lot of the "good" stuff went early, but I didn't make it there until Sunday, which was half price day.

I managed to walk out with only five books (for a total of $2.15).
Theodore H. VonLaue - Why Lenin? Why Stalin?
Kenneth C. Davis - Don't Know Much About Geography
Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin - Your Money or Your Life
Will Cuppy - The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody
Jane Rogers, ed - Good Fiction Guide
posted by kristin at 3:33 PM

Last night I went to see Terry Pratchett speak at the UW. It was the first author event I'd ever been to that had a sign language interpreter translating throughout. He didn't do a reading, just rambled for awhile and then took questions. I didn't actually take anything to sign, which is probably good given the size of the crowd. When I returned home I started his latest, Thud!.
posted by kristin at 3:29 PM

Bill Bryson's In a Sunburned Country is a typical Bryson travel book, this one about Australia. He rubs some people the wrong way, but I tend to enjoy them. I would of course like to visit Australia and see how much is exaggerated.

Joe Sacco's Palestine is a piece of journalism about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict told in the form of a graphic novel. Good, but a bit depressing.

David B.'s Epileptic is a graphic novel memoir of his childhood growing up in France with a brother who is epileptic. The most interesting parts were those describing all of the various "remedies" his parents tried.

I spent quite a few days reading Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Style-wise it reminded me a bit of Neal Stephenson's historical novels, but written about magicians instead of scientists.
posted by kristin at 3:17 PM

I went to see Cynthia Ozick speak the other night as part of the Seattle Arts & Lectures series, despite not having read any of her work. Today I picked up her book The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories.
posted by kristin at 7:34 PM

Arrived in the mail free from salon.com:
Molly Ivins - Who Let the Dogs In?
posted by kristin at 10:35 AM

Oops, I'm ten books behind on posting. Perhaps a new record.

Minister Faust's The Coyote Kings and the Space-Age Bachelor Pad was a good, if a bit odd, first novel. I'll likely read future books. It's probably the only book I've ever read set in Edmonton, Canada. If it's not, it's the only book I've ever read set in Edmonton, Canada that involves D&D playing geeks, dishwashing, and wacky mystical mysteries.

James Gleick's biography of Isaac Newton wasn't bad, but wasn't nearly as good as his biography of Richard Feynman. Granted, Feynman was probably the more interesting character from a personality, as opposed to science, standpoint, and there's a lot more source material.

Don and Emily Saliers' A Song to Sing, A Life to Live is a father-daughter collaboration about the interplay between music and spirituality. It had good moments, but overall was a bit fluffy.

Rob Brezsny's The Televisionary Oracle had more wacky religion than Minister Faust's novel but in this case radical feminism instead of something vaguely unexplainable. Fun reading. The entire text is available online if you want to take a peek.

Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club is one of the books I'd been moving around for far too many years without having gotten around to reading it. The immigrant experience as told by women transplanted from China to San Francisco, along with the stories of their American daughters.

Newcomer's Guide for Seattle by Monica Fischer and Amy Bellamy is exactly what the title says. I decided I should probably buy and read at least one book on the citynow that I live here, and this one seemed reasonable.

Stella Gibbons' The Gentle Powers wasn't as good as Cold Comfort Farm but was a quick light read. It did make me wonder though if there's a reason CCF seems to be the only book of hers ever available easily in the US.

Amazons by Cleo Birdwell (Don DeLillo) was probably the only book I'll ever read about hockey. It's the imaginary memoir of the first woman to play in the NHL. Fortunately for non-sports-fans like me the hockey itself was kept to a minimum.

Simon Winchester's The Professor and the Madman is a history of making of the Oxford English Dictionary. Worth reading.

Cory Doctorow's Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town I read entirely online. Wireless networking evangelism meets urban fantasy? The one thing I was left wondering was whether A* (the main character whose name changes throughout) is really a "normal" human in everything except personality.
posted by kristin at 12:02 AM

Apparently I only post when I'm avoiding doing something else (like work) so perhaps I'll start posting more once school starts. Alternatively perhaps I'll no longer have time to read. We'll see.

Over the weekend I was in Portland and therefore had to stop at Powells. Amazingly most of the stuff I bought wasn't there though. Wrigley-Cross Books was having a going out of business (or at least moving to online-only) sale so everything was 75% off. That's as good a justification for buying books I don't really need as any I've seen :)
My purchases:
Tom Robbins - Wild Ducks Flying Backward
Neil Gaiman - Two Plays for Voices
James Tiptree, Jr - Ten Thousand Light-Years from Home
Lynn Pan - Sons of the Yellow Emperor
Nalo Hopkinson - Skin Folk
Hitting the Skids in Pixeltown
Philip Roth - The Breast
Vegetarian Times Cookbook
posted by kristin at 11:53 PM