In My Mailbox #6

Well I've had an amazing week for books this week! I'll never, ever have time to read them all, but for now I'm happy just gazing at them and occasionally giving them a quick lick.

From Amazon:

Ah, these still make me smile when I look at them. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and The Scarlet Letter are Vintage edition (you know, the ones with the red spines), because I'm trying to collect the large majority of my classics in Vintage. 20,000 isn't pictured on my TBR shelf above because I read it in February, so it's already with my other Vintage books.

I've started reading Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children already, and it's amazing. Such a beautiful book too, in hardback with excellent quality paper and creepy photographs. I suspect it might become one of my favourite books of this year.

Forgotten is YA, but for some reason seems strangely hard to get hold of. Waterstones had it, but it was double the price of Amazon, and you know how that story ends...

I'm not usually a celebrity autobiography fan, but I read Stephen Fry's Making History novel (my review is here) and he writes very, very well. He seems to have led a vaguely interesting life (wasn't he in prison at one point?) and I'd love to know more about his friendship with Hugh Laurie.


From charity shops:


You know what you should do when you've just ordered a million books from Amazon, right? Immediately head out to the nearest charity shop in search of more.

 It's especially important to buy books you've already read. I mean, why wouldn't you buy books you've already read this year and therefore won't be rereading for a couple of years more?

To be fair though, I really enjoyed Carrie Fisher's autobiography when I borrowed it from the library (my review is here) so I was more than willing to pay £1 for it. The Other Boleyn Girl is my least favourite of Philippa Gregory's books, but I have all the others and I didn't want it to get lonely...

The End of Mr. Y though, I feel fully justified in buying. There's a new charity shop just opened in Saltaire, and it's really, really cheap. This was 50p for a brilliant condition, huge book. My only problem with that shop is they have a huge fish tank and I'm petrified of fish (yes, I know.) But Bex from An Armchair by the Sea raves about it constantly and I'm perfectly happy to lose 50p in return for what sounds like a brilliant book.

From a second hand book stall:

 This market stall is pretty much the reason I moved back home! They have a huge selection of all types of books for really reasonable prices.

In addition to all my other 'collections,' I'm working on getting all the Agatha Christies in the edition pictured above. I think I have about 30 of them, so I'm doing okay. They're all in perfect condition too, so I was really pleased (read: overly excited) so find a brand new The Labours of Hercules on the stall.

I'll be honest, I have absolutely no idea what Evermore is. I'd never heard of it before but it looked interesting so I grabbed it. I did read the back but now it's gone clean out of my mind!

I do like Philippa Gregory. I've heard she takes liberties with certain historical facts but what author doesn't? Her characters are always believable and she takes care not to use 21st century phrases; that's a huge no-no for me with historical fiction. This was £1 and I love the history of Richard III and Henry VI so there was no way I wasn't eventually going to buy this.

From ReaditSwapit:

God I love that website. Clockwork Angel has been on my wishlist for a while, but I hadn't got round to requesting it for a swap. As a pleasant surprise though, a swapper requested one of my books and this just happened to be on their book list. It's brand new too.

Sophie Kinsella's books are my secret shame; I really do enjoy them. I have a couple of the shopaholic ones left to read, but this is a stand-alone. 

As a R.A.K/early birthday present/general nice thing to do:

 Don't you just love that cover? This was sent to me by (again) Bex at An Armchair by the Sea, pretty much just because she's an awesome person. It's been on my wishlist for a while, but she spotted it and popped a copy in the post!

Those are all the books I've received, although there are a lot more that haven't arrived yet! Time to stop typing and start reading, I think...