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I left work today just before lunchtime because I’m sick (poor me, ok moving on) and expect to be home at least tomorrow, hopefully no longer. I left Dethroning the King at work but brought home The Paris Wife because I have been SO excited about it.

But then, even sick, I couldn’t help stopping by the half price bookstore on the way home. I’ve been trying to get over there for days and even though I felt awful and needed to crawl in bed, I couldn’t help myself. I had a gift card to spend!!

Of course I wanted just one or two things 😛 and so hadn’t picked up a hand cart, but you know I had to go back and get one…

A large part of what inspired this trip was actually a need for some Anita Brookner, so I can play along with Thomas over at My Porch as he presents International Anita Brookner Day! I was not really familiar with her til he proposed this mini-challenge/celebration of Brookner’s birthday, but the terms were just far too easy to pass up: read at least one of her many books by her birthday this July? Sounds like a breeze! Why pass up a friendly encouragement to try a new author? (On this note, I want Thomas over at Stuck in a Book to know that his Barbara Comyns recommendation, Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, is not two feet from this laptop as I type and I have ever intention of trying her soon, too. Perhaps I need a deadline a few months out like Thomas assigned! :))

But I didn’t stop there. I got all sorts of goodies:

That is:

the store’s entire stock of Sharon Kay Penman (Devil’s Brood, Here Be Dragons, and The Sunne in Splendour) – I love her so much and want to read everything she’s written!

True at First Light, The Garden of Eden, and The Torrents of Spring by Hemingway – I’ve read the first two of the three but want to own them; the third I know to be mid-early and critically understood to be “meh” but, you know, I want to be fully expert in ALL things Hemingway

Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence, because I’ve never read it and I need to get cracking on the Classics Challenge 🙂 and Moll Flanders by Defoe for the same reasons – I believe I saw some sort of television miniseries made from it many years ago, and enjoyed it, but haven’t read the book, which I have no doubt will be massively superior.

Hotel du Lac by Brookner, for the event mentioned above

Replay by Ken Grimwood was recommended just days ago by my librarian and sci-fi enthusiast friend Amy, so I picked that up when I saw it…

and finally, a book of Frida Kahlo postcards, because I owe some Postcrossings.

(yes, if you were wondering, I exceeded the amount I had on my gift card.)

All this, on top of my visit to the (bigger, public) library yesterday yielding the next two books in the Maisie Dobbs series for the read-along I’m participating in…

…I might make it through my sick day(s). 🙂

Filed under: book reviews |