Week in Review

"I can resist anything except temptation."

Oscar Wilde

Instead of lumping together a few memes, thought I'd just include the same information in a non-meme type format.

This last week found me inhaling Into the Wilderness by Sara Donati, which I had gotten from the library's Overdrive system. I loved this. Someone had compared this to Outlander by Diana Gabaldon, which I think is a fair comparison. Except Into the Wilderness is set in the early 1790s Upstate New York. And as it seems with library books, not a day after I finished it, my hold on Witches of East End by Melissa De La Cruz came in, so I've been reading that this weekend. This will be used in the Bibliophile Summer Reading Challenge, so will have a blurby sort of review to do. If there's interest, I can collect those once I've finished and post the ones that haven't been covered already.

I've also read the week's chapters in Sharpe's Tiger by Bernard Cornwell for the read along, and working on Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. Between the library books and Holy Early 1990s Mass Market Paperback with Tiny Font, Batman! issues, GWTW is taking a bit longer.

I also found myself in Borders, again. With restraint, I came out with The Ultimate French Verb Review and Practice and The Ultimate French Review and Practice. I took french in junior high and high school, so had no reference books but my uncle's now 25+ year old dictionary. I also found A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World by Tony Horwitz and The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley from the clearance rack.

My city's library system also had their literature sale last week, so on the last day I checked it out. They don't do the really big sales they used to, probably because they always have a sale area now. So the sale was on a small section of the normal section. Managed to find Here on Earth by Alice Hoffman, Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood, A Widow for One Year by John Irving, a nicer copy of The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (had gotten a paperback at another library sale a while ago), Juliet by Anne Fortier, The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, and Dawn on a Distant Shore by Sara Donati.

The Donati book happens to be book 2 in the Wilderness Saga, which I was going to buy at some point, if I could decide what format to get. It was just about all out of print, so I was leaning toward trade paperback, but the publisher has only done the first and last books in this size. So this has started me on the scavenger hunt of libraries and ebay for good condition hard covers of the missing books. I just need to remember that I don't need to get them all right now.

Also got via Paperbackswap The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry based on the recommendation of Wallace of Unputdownables. And Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman, won from Amy of Passages to the Past. Thanks Amy!

Plans for this week: Gone With the Wind, Witches of East End, Sharpe's Tiger, and A Kingdom's Cost by J.R. Tomlin