Some good things on offer:
Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm by Philip Pullman
Oh my god, Philip Pullman put together a collection of fairy tales! And they have little annotative notes and historical info from him following each story! Philip Pullman is magic. AND this beautiful copy has deckled edges!
A book about moral philosophy & ethics. Stuff I love to think about, even if I sort of hate arguing about it. Once I was driving around in a car with someone, and we were pretending that we were in a spaceship, and I made a choice in my fictional role that started a huge argument about moral philosophy. We started fighting in character, but it quickly became evident that we were really fighting about our beliefs. At the end of the drive we stopped the "game", but it was clear that we were both pissed.
To The Letter by Simon Garfield
To be honest I'm not that keen on "History of (random thing)" books. They're interesting to read once, but I generally don't buy anything that I think (or know) I'm only going to read once. So maybe when this hits the library, it looked really interesting.
Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh
If you haven't read Allie's blog by the same name, stop reading my blog and get over there. Read the entire thing. Twice. Allie Brosh is a genius storyteller and has written some of the funniest, truest stuff on the internet. I almost bought this book, but I didn't. I almost flipped through and read the new, never-before-published stories, but I didn't.
This is a book to be savored. To be read on a day off of work with no chores, no homework, nothing but you and a warm blanket and lots of laughing. I won't buy this book until I know I have the chance to really delight in it all by itself.
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
There used to be a great paperback (or was it hardback?) green edition of this that was billed as a 5-part trilogy anthology. THis is part of the "Build yourself a classical library" series that Barnes & Noble is doing. It's a nice edition, but I'm not sure it's appropriate. I would prefer the older design. The thing with these classical copies is that they look like they would hold up to abuse pretty well.
If your copy of Hitchhiker's Guide isn't totally tatty, then what are you doing? Are you even reading it?
Here's the "classic" table that I was talking about. Some of the stuff is what you'd expect; Gray's Anatomy, The Bible, TKAM. Some of it is expected but sort of annoying: I don't want all of Jane Austen's books parked together in one volume. Ditto the Brontes.
They're all hardback, with gilded page edges and marbled endpapers. It's all very fancy. And it suits even a modern book like Wicked, but I had to laugh at the doubled-up Jurassic Park and The Lost World.
Not that they're not good books, but I love my little paperback that I can shove in my pocket for anytime, anywhere dinosaur action. Why have a shelf copy? It's just not a book that you take off the shelf and sit down in your armchair and read.
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
When I picked this up, I was wondering if it was going to be more philosophy about the Hedgehog's Dilemma, but actually, it's a novel about a bunch of zany people who live in a French hotel.
I'd read that, for sure.
As I may or may not have mentioned here, I'm pretty much done with alternative Jane Austen books, and I certainly won't be buying any without reading them first because the market is flooded with so much nonsense. This looked pretty good as I thumbed through it, but I'll wait for the library copy.
And speaking of the library... I stopped there on the way home and came up with J.K. Rowling's The Casual Vacancy which has been on my list for quite some time.
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