In My Mailbox #32 - Pride and Prejudice Flipback Book, Paulo Coelho, TRON and more!

 I kind of feel like I should apologise to the readers of Yorkshire for not leaving them any books to buy anywhere. I thought I felt guilty last week, but no - this week is clearly so very much worse. It's a downward spiral people.

It says a lot that I finished my 50th book of the year on the same day as I added my 150th book to my TBR...

So anyway. I managed to get hold of two new Pride and Prejudices this week. One was from the Oxfam charity shop in Skipton, and the other was from eBay. It's a weird little book actually. They're called Flipback Books, I think. I heard about them ages ago but them promptly forgot about them, so obviously they didn't take on. They're printed sideways on really thin Bible-type paper and you're meant to be able to turn the page with just your thumb.

I like it for the novelty value and because it's a Pride and Prejudice I didn't have, but I'm not that impressed otherwise.

What I am impressed with however, is the awesome giveaway I won over at Fiktshun. $75 worth of books from the Book Depository, can you believe it!?

 These are the seven books I chose on the left. I couldn't resist choosing the fourth Pirates! in an Adventure with... book, considering how much I loved ...Moby Dick and ...Scientists. I know I haven't shut up about them since I read them, but hey ho :)

There's also Is Everybody Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling, actress and writer for the US version of The Office. I love that show. I can't stand the UK version, but it's hilarious so I can't wait to read this too.

The Mermaid's Madness is the sequel to The Stepsister Scheme by Jim C. Hines, which I read a few months ago and loved. This one is based on the original Little Mermaid story and hopefully it'll be just as good as the first.

What else? Oh, Undead and Unfinished. Who doesn't love Betsy the Vampire Queen? I've gone off paranormal romance lately, but Mary Janice Davidson just doesn't seem to count. For one thing, I read the Betsy books before the whole genre thing really kicked off, and secondly they're just so damned good!

If you read my review of We Bought A Zoo by Benjamin Mee, you'll know how much I loved it. Well apparently My Family & Other Animals is vaguely similar. I've heard of it before, but as Benjamin Mee mentions it in his own book and Library Thing keeps pushing me to buy it, I figured I'd give it a go. 

After by Amy Efaw is YA contemporary, which isn't my usual kind of thing, but I've read some wonderful reviews. I saw a middle-aged business man closely examining it in Waterstones last week, and it intrigued me...

I've wanted Don't Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales of an Allergic Life for what seems like forever - it was practically on the bottom of my huge-ass wishlist. It's a lot smaller book than I expected, but I can't wait to read it as my immune system means I have similar problems to the author.

I'm pretty sure everyone knows how awesome the weather in Britain has been lately - either you've been living it or you've seen constant Twitter updates from shocked British residents. Well, this week we've taken the opportunity and actually Gone Places. On Tuesday we went to Skipton, a little historic market town about 15 miles away and home of The Best Bookshop in the Universe.

It's just all kinds of brilliant. It's like The Works, but with different books and a much, much bigger selection. I came home with - 

To Die For: Is Fashion Wearing Out the World? by Lucy Siegle - The non-fiction section in this bookshop is absolutely amazing. They pretty much have books on any topic you can think of. I was drawn to this by the pretty cover, but found it fascinating when I flicked through it. It's about the corruption inherent in the world of fashion and how cheap clothing stores like Primark are destroying the environment.
 
The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury - I loved Fahrenheit 451 by the same author, so when I saw this book about the tattoos on a man's back coming to life, I couldn't resist.

The Perks of being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky - I didn't actually know that much about this book. I'd heard of it, obviously, but the plot was completely new to me. Still, for £1, it's a book I can eventually cross of my Project Fill in the Gaps list.

Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters by Matt Ridley - Okay, so I am most definitely not a science person. Probably why my chosen career is as unscientific as you can get. Still, I've always been interested in genes and biological inheritance, and Genome looks like just the right simply-explained book to help me out with that.

And then, as if that wasn't enough, we also wandered through the many, many charity shops in Skipton and did fairly well.

Most importantly, look at this - a mint condition box set of eight Paulo Coelho books for £8. It looks like it's never been read. Veronika Decides to Die was one of the first books I ever reviewed for Booking in Heels and I recently read The Devil and Miss Prym (I'm behind on reviews, so sue me) so I was more than a little excited with this.
I also found:

The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys - I've wanted this for a long time but never got round to actually, you know, ordering it or looking for it. I loved Jane Eyre and although I've heard this book has faults, I can't wait to expand on the classic story.

TRON by Brian Daley - Okay, so I haven't actually seen either of the TRON films, but I know the basic concept and it sounds brilliant. When I saw a little old-fashioned paperback version in a charity shop, I just couldn't resist.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett - I remember seeing the film come out and was vaguely interested, but as always, I wanted to read the book first. I've read flowing reviews, but I wasn't desperate enough to read it until I eventually stumbled across one in a charity shop, which I knew I would.

Finally, finally, FINALLY - this last book I bought from eBay on a whim. It was on my Amazon wishlist, but much cheaper here. Title Deeds: The Hidden Stories Behind 50 Books by Gary Dexter does exactly what it says on the tin. It goes behind the scenes of certain novels to explain what prompted the author to write that particular book and where the title came from. Books like The Woman in White and Catch-22 are probed in detail to figure out what makes them tick.

So suddenly I feel even guiltier than I did last week! It's made slightly better by the fact that I didn't actually BUY seven of these, but it's still another, ooh... 21 books added to my TBR. Oh God. Hadn't actually added that up before... *cringes*

Come on, make me feel better - what did you get in your mailbox this week?