The Next Best Book Club discussion

The splurge thread was another one that was getting awfully long and intimidating our new members.

So, on request, here is a new, squeaky clean thread in which you can share your latest splurges, because we are curious and nosy creatures who want to buy what you just bought!!

Share with us all of the titles you just had to have!!

So I went on my first big splurge in a while today!
I bought:

The Effect of Living Backwards by Heidi Julavits
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
Don't Stop the Carnival by Herman Wouk
My Name is Russell Fink by Michael Snyder
Just in Case by Meg Rosoff
Exit the Actress by Priya Parmar
and Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

My latest additions are:

My Family and Other Animals - I had read something about this book, series actually, years a go so I decided it was time.

An Awfully Big Adventure - Saw the movie and wanted to read the book.

Blott on the Landscape - Saw the PBS miniseries years ago so I picked up the book. Hope it's as funny as the miniseries was.

The Camomile Lawn This is another one I can blame on PBS.

I just bought the entire Nightlife series consisting of 4 books by Travis Ludke and the entire When I was a Lad Anthology series by Raymond Scheicher. Hopefully I will be able to read all of them on my 2 week holiday soon.

Unfortunately, with the Kindle, I am constantly splurging on ebooks. I just downloaded Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham.

The Little Prince 70th anniversary edition with CD's narrated by Viggo Mortensen.

I had a big splurge last night after seeing an offer I couldn't refuse.

All Snubnose Press titles are currently reduced to 77p (99c) via http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_n... in the UK and http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_nos... in the US.

My buys were:

Queen Of Diamonds
A Wind Of Knives
To Die Upon A Kiss
and
Stiffed

which means I now have them all (at least I think I do).

The Little Prince is great, Karen, and I'm going to look at the anniversary edition just out of interest.

I just made my first pre-release purchase EVER,of The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism, based on an interview with translator David Mitchell in The Guardian. My own son has autism, and I've previously read Temple Grandin's "Emergence: Labeled Autistic." While he's a lot younger (7) I look forward to reading this in August as a way to get inside the mind of a boy in the 21st century.

The entire Roald Dahl collection, for my son who fell in love with Matilda.

Bought
- the game of thrones series
-the cuckoos calling

Amazon have some kindle items on sale so I bought a whole bunch of stuff.

- extinction point
-the second ship
The girl who circumnavigated Fairyland in as ship of her own making
-The stepford wives
Rosemary s baby
A kiss before dying
The boys from brazil

Probably a few others that I've forgotten.

We joined a reader's challenge a few days ago, posted our list of 14 books each, and then to prove we mean what we say, we both downloaded 14 books.

Fortunately, we are traveling in our RV in September. We tend to read more when we are RV'ing, or anyway, that is our rationale for downloading 28 books in a day.

I just picked up
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Gotta Keep on Tryin'
Special Providence
The Hunger Games
Gone
Plus the library in our area had a fill-a-grocery-bag-for-$5 sale...there are too many in that group to list.

I don't have a latest splurge. But I'll be in Portland, Oregon in a few weeks and have a long list going for my first ever visit to Powell's Bookstore. It includes:
Renee Ashley – Because I Am the Shore I Want to be the Sea
Chinelo Okparanta – Happiness, Like Water
Susan Stinson – Spider in a Tree
The People in Trees - Hanya Yanagihara
Quiet Dell – Jayne Anne Phillips
100 Apocalypses – Lucy Corin

Please, please (no, go ahead do it) tell me anything else to get.

I went to Tesco today to do a weekly food shop and ended up buying 3 books! Took the boredom out of the food shop anyway...

I bought Firefly Lane, The Last Runaway and Instructions for a Heatwave.

Got y'all beat: I just bought 50 copies of Love Lyrics: The Musical Marital Manual. O.K. it's my own I just self-published but, boy, you talk about splurging: that's on top of a new computer, home recording equipment for an audio book, and a new mandola. I just retired, so I should run out of money soon. Last other book was One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp which I HIGHLY recommend.

I love splurging!! Especially if it involves books! :) Last Saturday, I went to Books-A-Million (BAM). There I felt like a kid in candy store. :) I had $125 and a hinkering for new books. I bought Illumante, Clockwork Angel, Sweet Evil, Reboot, and Ruby Red. All of which I've already read. :) Now I wait for my next splurge....

I finally bought Beautiful Bastard!!I've been wanting to buy it forever and FINALLY bought it!

I splurged a bit on audiobooks recently

Neverwhere
Trapped and Hunted of the Iron Druid series
Ivanhoe
The Color Purple
Tess of the d'Ubervilles
Storm Front
and
The Time Traveler's Wife

Because I have the Kindle it is alot easier to splurge. I downloaded The Start of You, Newsjacking, Rome's Last Citizen, 1984, and To Kill A Mockingbird this week. I try to read a book a day and then go over it the next day so I consider myself a voracious reader.

Don wrote: "Got y'all beat: I just bought 50 copies of Love Lyrics: The Musical Marital Manual. O.K. it's my own I just self-published but, boy, you talk about splurging: that's on top of a new computer, home..."

I would buy that many books at a time, if I could. The closest I can get to that is when our local library has their quarterly fill a grocery bag for five dollars sale...if I bought all the books I really want when I want I'd end up living in a cardboard box and standing by the road with a sign that says will work for books.

Thanks to birthday gift cards, I recently bought:

Night Film
The Song of the Lark
Rose Under Fire
Burial Rites
Hattie Ever After
Fangirl
Doc
Forge
The Whistling Season
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
Plainsong

I'm very thankful that my family gives me those cards; books are my very favorite splurge.

Just finished an audition for a orchestra in North wales, as a reward I went to Tesco and bought:



and

I haven't splurged for a little while but when I buy I buy BIG!

The Book Thief
Angel Evolution
Between the Lines
I Capture the Castle
Beautiful Creatures
The Giver
The Great Gatsby
Pemberly to Waterloo
Will Grayson, Will Grayson

I've been taking advantage of all the free ebooks too :) And I'm saving up for Allegiant!!!!

I've only read one of those Caitlin and that us The Book Thief - absolutely loved it!

Jackie wrote: "I've only read one of those Caitlin and that us The Book Thief - absolutely loved it!"

Yeah I've read it before and it's one of my absolute favourite books. I hope the movie's good too but sometimes adaptions are pretty horrible.

Caitlin wrote: "Jackie wrote: "I've only read one of those Caitlin and that us The Book Thief - absolutely loved it!"

Yeah I've read it before and it's one of my absolute favourite books. I hope the movie's good ..."

I loved that book and based on the trailer, it looks to be a good adaptation. Now I just need to convince someone to see it with me!

That would be a bit of a pricey cinema ticket for me Heather otherwise I'd offer to come with you haha

Jackie: For either of us, LOL -- though I would love to visit the UK some day. ;)

I've offered to loan my book to the two friends with whom I saw the trailer, and am surprised neither took me up on that. I think it's one they would both like. Both the book and movie, really. Ah, well...

I just got a 1st edition signed copy of Richard Ford's Wildlife at a book fair for $5. Needless to say, it was the highlight of the day.

Chris wrote: "I just got a 1st edition signed copy of Richard Ford's Wildlife at a book fair for $5.

That is very cool indeed.

I got myself 3:

-The Invention of Hugo Cabret (the book and its pages were so vibrant and beautiful, I just bought it without having any clue what it was about)

-Lord of the Flies by William Golding

-Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (a childhood classic I wanted to re-read)

I just got (today) Mississippi Sissy and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. They were recommended by a friend who is an author herself so I have high hopes! Will let you know.

Library bi-annual book sale means splurge for cheap (if that's a thing?)
I managed to get my hands on:
Mrs. Kennedy and Me: An Intimate Memoir

Home: A Memoir of My Early Years

The Memory Keeper's Daughter

An Object of Beauty

John Adams

White Dog Cafe Cookbook: Multicultural Recipes and Tales of Adventure from Philadelphia's Revolutionary Restaurant

To keep my buying habits in check, I've limited myself to only picking up hardcovers in good condition. It's seriously the least I can do to not look like a hoarder after a book sale!

Just bought a 1st edition of Kurt Vonnegut's 'Bluebeard' at a library book sale for $3. Can't beat that. (Unless it was only $2, and was Slaughterhouse-Five, but I digress)

I just bought a pearl necklace that I really shouldn't have....

I love sneaking peeks at everyone's splurges!

It's been sooooo long since I just went shopping for books for pleasure reading. This thread fills me with an intense, but healthy, jealousy :)

I bought We Have Always lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Between the librey used book sale (five books for fifty cents each) and Half Price Books, I've picked up several on my wishlist--an eclectic mix, as usual:

* Deadlock by Iris Johansen (A rare non-Eve stand-alone)
* Beeline to Trouble by Hannah Reed (Book 4, missing books 2 & 3)
* Still Life by Louise Penny (First of series)
* A Carol for a Corpse by Claudia Bishop (Book 15, have not read any books in this series)
* The First Love Cookie Club by Lori Wilde

* A Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne (Nov classic group read)
* Cold Ridge by Carla Neggers (Finally! This was a hard one to find.)
* Treacherous Toys by Joyce Lavene and Jim Lavene (Book 5 of series)
* While My Sister Sleeps by Barbara Delinsky
* The Road by Cormac McCarthy (Wasn't on my list, but it was on the clearance rack and I knew it was a previous group read)
* Ghost at Work by Carolyn Hart (first of series)
* Merry, Merry Ghost by Carolyn Hart (second of series)
* I'm the Vampire, That's Why by Michele Bardsley

There is wonderful place near me called The Archive, which has a warehouse full of paper memorabilia and books. I spent like four hours going through a table of old pulp books from the 40's and beyond and found like 12, including an old copy of Day of The Triffids.

Picked up 2 new titles to add to my collection today, another book on Lincoln and a true story about the man who invented a film projector, which includes scandal, journalism and murder

I was buying a present for my cousin off of bookoutlet and ended up with:

This Burns my Heart by Samuel Park
Make Good Art by Neil Gaiman (Her Christmas present)
Stardust by Neil Gaiman
The Marbury Lens by Andrew Smith
The Harmony Silk Factory by Tash Aw
Woes of the True Police Man by Roberto Bolaño
Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler
All Men are Liars by Alberto Manguel
Life and Death are Wearing Me Out by Mo Yan

I went to Halfprice books with several books, and found a TON of the Sookie Stackhouse series in the clearance section. I've been devouring them...almost got them all in one place.

At least I came home with fewer books than I went with, that's good, right?

I got some books from B&N.com that were up to 90% off.. for $25 I got this:
The Kitchen House
20th Century Ghosts
Incendiary
Auschwitz: A New History
Comeback: A Mother and Daughter's Journey Through Hell and Back
Witches of East End
This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It
and i cant find it on here right away but I got an awesome copy of Dracula with illustrations by Becky Cloonan!

The last couple weeks have been a splurge time. Here are some of what I've bought:
The Library at Night - Alberto Manguel (for the book club read
Three Major Plays - Lope de Vega
Works of Ovid - Ovid
Caleb's Crossing - Geraldine Brooks (for a facebook historical fiction group discussion later this month)
Maddadam - Margaret Atwood
Complete Poems - Walt Whitman (for a course I plan to take on EdX platform)

Went to my favorite used book store this weekend and got:
Like Life
The Fifth Mountain
On the Beach
Nightfall, and
Player Piano

So many books, so little time! Last weekend I really splurged and bought a number of books from my local used book store (can't remember what they were but they had been on my 'to get' list) and then proceeded to splurge on the kindle!

"Cold Hit," Linda Fairstein
"Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear," Ed McBain
"Rueful Death" and "Love Lies Bleeding," Susan Wittig Albert
"Mum's the Word" and "Down the Garden Path," Dorothy Cannell
"Queen of Last Hopes: The Story of Margaret of Ajou," Susan Higginbotham
"The Magicians," Lev Grossman
"An Unmarked Grave," Charles Todd
"Strangled Prose," Joan Hess

Thank goodness for Christmas gift cards! And now I have to not look at Goodreads recommendations until I've worked my way through most of these!

This is not a splurge so much as a confession. These past holidays I purchased Doctor Sleep by Stephen King as a gift for someone. Getting closer and closer I decided to keep the book for myself and gifted one of a few gift cards to a restaurant we keep around for gift emergencies. Not proud, but really wanted book, plus, I'll let them borrow it when I'm done.

J.H. wrote: "This is not a splurge so much as a confession. These past holidays I purchased Doctor Sleep by Stephen King as a gift for someone. Getting closer and closer I decided to keep the book for myself an..."

Sounds like the time I bought one of the Harry Potter books for my daughter for Christmas, and then ended up asking my in laws to buy her another one since I wanted to read it.

In the wake of the completion of my first book of the year (Haruki Murakami's 1Q84), I went on a desperate splurge to fill the newly-opened emotional void:

. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret (Judy Bloom)
. The Teleportation Accident (Ned Beauman)
. The Fault In Our Stars (John Green)
. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Haruki Murakami)
. Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace)
. The Rosie Project (Graeme Simsion)

I went on a B&N bender last week:

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
The Soldier's Wife by Joanna Trollope
As The Pig Turns by M.C. Beaton
The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman
South of Superior by Ellen Airgood
The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith
Revenge of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz
Curse of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz
The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson
The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom