book splurge

Yesterday the library branch next town over had its annual sale. The two branches closer to me raised their prices the last sale I went to, but this one still had hardbacks at $2 and softcovers $1 each. I don’t mind spending when it supports the library! Here’s my haul, with a few notes:

I’ve still got a mild fascination with sailing and fishing operations. Thus Fishdecks. Nature Wars is about how urban sprawl is mixing with wildlife that adjusts to human presence -kind of like that book that called them ‘weed animals’ I’m thinking, only a lot more current. I’m finding that the more gardening I do, the less instructional and encyclopedic books appeal to me, but gardening narratives sure do. Those in this stack appear to be more of the narrative type, except for Success with House Plants. It just looked so thorough I couldn’t pass it up, and the pictures are very clear. Ditto with the aquarium fish book. I probably don’t need another bonsai book, I haven’t even read or applied the use of the ones I already have, but this one was very attractive. The horse book here looks a bit dated (especially in quality of photographs) but it seems to be full of stories illustrating the various points, so I thought it might be good. I’m gradually adding to my Calvin and Hobbes collection. But I haven’t paid attention to which of the volumes are compilations of several others, so I probably have a duplicate or two.

These I all got just because they looked interesting. The Wild Truth is about Chris McCandless, told by his sister. I wasn’t aware that she’d written a book! A Wayside Tavern is a duplicate- oops. I have another copy of that one picked up at the last sale. Caught my eye for the same reasons… I have not yet read any James Fenimore Cooper so here’s a go with The Deerslayer. I just looked it up- it was the last book he wrote of his series, but it’s a prequel to all the others- so probably a good one to start with! Alien Animals looks interesting, although another old, dated book- about introduced wildlife in various areas of the world and the problems they cause. Unicorn Mountain is an older fantasy novel about unicorns that are discovered living near a ranch and someone wants to get footage for a wildlife tv program but then they find out the unicorns have a disease so should they intervene? I like the straightforward-sounding approach to unicorns (the story doesn’t appear to have magical elements). Backyard Giants is about competitions to grow the biggest pumpkin. Castaway appears to be about some guys who deliberately lived on an island to see how they could survive there- reminded me of Thor Heyerdahl’s books when I thumbed through it- due to the writing style and age of the photos.

And these titles caught my eye because I’ve seen them on your blogs and they are probably all on my TBR lists here somewhere. I’m reading One Thousand White Women right now. It will be interesting to come back here in a few months (or years, who am I kidding) to see how my actual reading of these compares to the initial impressions that made me pick them up.

I also got a few knitting books for my twelve-year-old.