Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Booksplurge

If books can be seen as immigrants into my house, I'm probably not on the BNP's Christmas Card list. In the past couple of weeks my border controls have been woefully lax, and since my household nominally runs on a "one book in, one book out" policy, all my recent immigrants have been illegal. My house is well beyond full up, with reduced opportunities to be read for the indigenous books.

In the past fortnight, the following have eluded the border police:

Philippa Gregory, The White Queen
RJ Ellory, The Anniversary Man
Alastair Reynolds, The Prefect
Mark Billingham, Bloodline
CJ Sansom, Winter in Madrid
James Lee Burke, The Neon Rain
Sean Lang, British History for Dummies
Ralph Ellison, The Invisible Man
Paul Strathern, The Medici
Ian Mortimer, The Perfect King

I'm very pleased with that crop - a mixture of genres, and of writers I've been meaning to read for a while (Burke, Ellison) and some old favourites. Considering I haven't read all the books I read for Christmas yet, it's hard to justify gobbling up so many new books, but...well, if you're a reader, you'll understand.

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5 comments:

Frances Garrood said...

Tim, I'm on your side. Even if there's no room to move, I don't think you can ever have too many books. People who think you can just don't understand. Sack the border police. Who needs them?

Tim Stretton said...

And there was another one I missed, "Stone's Fall", by Iain Pears.

Let's hope for a nice hot summer to read them all in the sun...

David Isaak said...

Hey, they aren't food--it isn't like they'll go moldy if you don't get around to them for ten years.

Having a number of books laying around which I haven't yet read makes me feel wickedly wealthy.

Verifications word: vidolers. I'm not sure what exactly a vidoler does during the course of a day's work, but I'm pretty sure they have a guild of them somewhere in Mondia.

Tim Stretton said...

You're right, David. I always like to know what I'm planning to read next or I get jittery, so I need a decent pile of stuff at all times. (Next read: Dazed and Aroused, Gavin James Bower, once I've finished The Anniversary Man by RJ Ellory).

Tim Stretton said...

And I wish I knew how the verification algorithm worked: I'd love to be able to generate some of these words myself!