Wednesday, December 28, 2011

New Books in Our Home

K's holiday haul
As you can probably guess, a lot of new books made their way into our home this Christmas! I received

London Under by Peter Ackroyd
The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family by Mary J. Lovell
A Burial at Sea by Charles Finch
The Midnight Palace by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin
All Clear by Connie Willis

I was so excited by all of these especially since five are hardcovers! I wanted the Dickens bio for my Year of Dickens that I'm starting in February (yes, a year ... yes, I know it's a lot of Dickens). I needed All Clear since I have Blackout but didn't want to start it knowing how the story ends abruptly at the end. Now I can just read the novels together. My sister gave me The Sisters and I'm excited to pair reading it with the Diana Mosley book I got from the holiday swap. I also have a couple books still on the way this week -- I Am Half-Sick of Shadows by Alan Bradley and The Somnambulist by Essie Fox (which I had to order from the UK).

Z got even more books than I did. I split his up into a couple of groups so that you could see them better. There are so many fantastic colors in there! He's already spent a lot of time filling in the Wimpy Kid book and reading his Pokemon manga (which I just realized I photographed on the wrong side of the books - duh!).

Non-fiction titles
Manga and graphic novels
A couple more books
The husband got a couple of graphic novel and comic collections, Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson, Revolutionaries by Jack Rakove and Onward by Howard Schultz. He already put them away in his TBR stacks so I didn't get a picture. I'm not even entirely sure that's all he got but it seems right!

I gave my sister Modelland by Tyra Banks, Bridget Jones' Diary by Helen Fielding and An Abundance of Katherines by John Green. I forgot to get a picture of those before she flew back home yesterday. I also wish I had read the John Green book before I gave it to her.

Besides that lovely stack of books, I also got a couple of classic movies--Bringing Up Baby, My Favorite Wife and Notorious--that all feature Cary Grant (yay!), a new iPod classic because my 30GB one is full and almost seven years old and is starting to fail a little, some wonderful gift cards and lots of dark chocolate from See's Candies. I'm going to have to be good and just stick to one piece a day or I'll never lose these last pounds!

I hope you all got some fantastic books and gifts over the holidays but, most of all, I hope that you were able to relax and enjoy yourselves. We still have one week off of school and I plan to spend it reading and getting caught up on the blog again. I have some great books to write about, a year to summarize and some plans to finalize.

Happy to be in a family of readers,
K and Z

7 comments:

  1. What an excellent collection of books - I want to read the Claire Tomalin bio of Dickens, but I'll be starting with Peter Ackroyd's bio first, which I'm really looking forward to - I like his writing style.

    And the Issacson bio of Einstein is really good, too!

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  2. You did get a lot of great books … and how wonderful to be surrounded by readers! I dream of that!

    I'm assuming you read Blackout -- or else All Clear won't make a lick of sense as it is basically the continuation of Blackout. Just want to make sure!!!!

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  3. Tracy - Because I'll already be spending some of this year with Peter Ackroyd's London and London Under, I will do the Tomalin first. And I anticipate picking up the Einstein bio at some point too (possibly before the husband ever gets to it!).

    Jenners - The husband doesn't read as much as I do but only because he is busy writing apps and making websites in most of his free time. If he's not on the computer then he's reading! And I bought Blackout this year (found a used signed hardcover!) but refused to start it until I had All Clear. And then, of course, I wanted All Clear in a hardcover too to have a nice set so I put it on my wishlist. Now I have both and am ready to go!

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  4. I love The Sisters! Riveting and eye-opening. --Brett

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  5. What a lovely set of gifts! I would love to read the book about the Mitfords! Happy New Year!

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  6. I thought of you over the holidays because I read The Hound of the Baskervilles for my book club (which I guess I had never read before for some reason). I haven't had time to catch up on blogs or comment for a few months, but here I am finally. :) By the way, J.D. & Jake love their Diary of a Wimpy kid fill-in books as well.

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  7. Brett - I'm so excited to start into the soap opera of these women's lives!

    Col - I bet you would like it too!

    Jody - Awesome! And that book is kind of cool. Z spends forever writing in it. Some of it is funny and some is a bit crude but other parts are thoughtful and I hope we manage to keep it around so that we can read what he wrote years from now!

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