Monday, January 24, 2011

Book swag!

Ah... the joys of having $72 worth of trade credit at a local bookstore! (Well, $36 now.)

1) The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson. I read the first one fully expecting to be disappointed, since thrillers really aren't my genre of choice, and ended up staying up until past 3 AM finishing it. I also saw the movie adaptation just yesterday and loved it, I think, even more than the book. So it's definite: I have to read the others so that I can watch the movies. (This is a thing with me. I have to read the book first unless it's one of those Victorian-era tomes with a bajillion characters and settings. I remember being so confused by Sense and Sensibility until I saw the Emma Thompson movie and could finally separate all the Dashwoods and Elliots in my head.)

2) Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres. Most of what I know about this book is taken up by the fact that Nicholas Cage starred in the movie adaptation and he's one of the last actors on my list for Romantic Lead. But it keeps popping up on Best Of lists on the sporcle.com literature quizzes (and if you've never been to sporcle.com before, I apologize for stealing your day away by introducing it to you). I read enough of it to see that the writing's very good, and the story seems interesting, since I'm a sap for romance.

3) The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles. For years now I've thought this book was written by John Knowles, the author of A Separate Peace, a book I read recently because I'd never studied it in high school and then heartily disliked because the foreshadowing was so painfully obvious I understood why no one past high school touches it again. I feel like a dunce. This one's also romantic, I guess. Wasn't planning that trend, but I'll take it!

4) Mattimeo by Brian Jacques. I was a huge Redwall fan as a kid and still adore a couple of them. This one (with the original cover yet! My heart soars!) rounds out my three favorites, along with Salamandastron and Pearls of Lutra. Though I think eventually I'm going to have to get Mariel of Redwall and The Bellmaker too. And Mossflower. And Redwall. And maybe The Long Patrol too. ;-)

5) Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin. I know I read this a decade and a half ago, but I don't remember a bit of it. Still, for some reason I've been trying to slowly build up my library of children's classics over the past year or two. Possibly this is the only way my biological clock can find of manifesting itself.

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