First, since she was a bit less greedy than me, ~e's acquisitions:
- Title: The Other Queen
- Author: Philippa Gregory
- ISBN: 9781416549123
- Binding: Hardcover
- Publisher: Touchstone
- Pub Date: September 2008
- Pages: 438
- Price: Free
- Obtained from: Simon & Schuster rep
- Synopsis: Gregory fictionalizes a little-known episode in the life of Mary, Queen of Scots.
- Title: Farm City - The Education of an Urban Farmer
- Author: Novella Carpenter
- ISBN: 9781594202216
- Binding: ARC
- Publisher: Penguin Press
- Pub Date: June 2009
- Pages: 269 (subject to change)
- Price: Free
- Obtained from: Penguin rep
- Synopsis: Memoir of one woman living on a farm in downtown Oakland. The jacket copy mentions that her turkeys keep escaping and winding up with the prostitutes that hang out just off the nearby highway. Sounds interesting.
- Title: More of This World or Maybe Another
- Author: Barb Johnson
- ISBN: 9780061732270
- Binding: ARC
- Publisher: Harper Perennial
- Pub Date: November 2009
- Pages: 188 (subject to change)
- Price: Free
- Obtained from: HarperCollins rep
- Synopsis: A collection of stories about four outsiders whose lives intersect on the backstreets of New Orleans, written by a woman who has been a carpenter in New Orleans for more than 20 years. The rep told us that the story "If the Holy Spirit Comes for You," about a pig, has even made workers at meat-packing plants cry.
- Title: The Whiskey Rebels
- Author: David Liss
- ISBN: 9781400064205
- Binding: Hardcover
- Publisher: Random House
- Pub Date: September 2008
- Pages: 525
- Price: Free
- Obtained from: Random House rep
- Synopsis: Liss writes historical thrillers infused with financial intrigue. His first novel set in America, The Whiskey Rebels features (among other things) a disgraced spy from George Washington's army, the early days of the Bank of the United States, rival founding fathers, and the volatile whiskey trade.
- Title: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
- Author: Alan Bradley
- ISBN: 9780385342308
- Binding: Hardcover
- Publisher: Delacorte Press
- Pub Date: April 2009
- Pages: 373
- Price: Free
- Obtained from: Random House rep
- Synopsis: In the summer of 1950, eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce must use her chemistry skills and deductive knowledge to solve a murder at the decaying English mansion her family calls home. When not doing that, she's slowly poisoning her younger sibling. It's being marketed as a "tea-cozy" mystery and I've heard it described as "one of the elderly ladies from Arsenic & Old Lace as a child".
- Author: Philippa Gregory
Next, the things both of us individually marked on our wishlists (we'll have to share, I guess):
- Title: The End of Overeating - Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite
- Author: David A. Kessler, MD
- ISBN: 9781605297859
- Binding: Hardcover
- Publisher: Rodale
- Pub Date: April 2009
- Pages: 320
- Price: Free
- Obtained from: Macmillan rep
- Synopsis: In this groundbreaking investigation, Dr Kessler explains why we eat more than we need to and what we can do to stop the vicious and unhealthy cycle of overeating. I personally wanted this book because I'd heard the author on NPR earlier this week talking about how he even went dumpster-diving behind restaurants in order to figure out exactly what we were putting into our bodies.
- Title: The Fourth Part of the World
- Author: Toby Lester
- ISBN: 9781416535317
- Binding: ARC
- Publisher: Free Press
- Pub Date: November 2009
- Pages: 442 (subject to change)
- Price: Free
- Obtained from: Simon & Schuster rep
- Synopsis: 500 years ago, two obscure German scholars made an epochal leap of the imagination to design the Waldseemuller map, the first map to call the New World America and to declare it separate from Asia. Lester traces the convergence of ideas, discoveries, and social forces that made the Waldseemuller map possible.
- Title: Chronic City
- Author: Jonathan Lethem
- ISBN: 9780385518635
- Binding: ARC
- Publisher: Doubleday
- Pub Date: October 2009
- Pages: 422 (subject to change)
- Price: Free
- Obtained from: Random House rep
- Synopsis: It's Jonathan Lethem and therefore nearly impossible to synopsize. We'll try anyway. In short, an ex-child star is living in Manhattan while his fiance is trapped on the International Space Station by low-orbit mines. The child star, named Chase Insteadman, winds up working with a pothead pop critic named Perkus Tooth, a self-loathing ghostwriter named Oona Laszlo, and the NYC mayor's fixer (named Richard Abneg, in case you wanted to know) to unearth the truth. The truth about what, I'm not sure, since the jacket copy is kind of vague on that point.
- Title: Coop - A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting
- Author: Michael Perry
- ISBN: 9780061240430
- Binding: ARC
- Publisher: Harper
- Pub Date: May 2009
- Pages: 352 (not sure if that's the same as the hardcover edition)
- Price: Free
- Obtained from: HarperCollins rep
- Synopsis: The author of Population 485 and Truck: A Love Story tells about his first year of marriage, living on a 37-acre farm in Wisconsin with his new (and newly pregnant) wife. If it's half as good as either of the previous two books, I expect to both laugh and cry (though likely not simultaneously).
- Author: David A. Kessler, MD
And then there's my trove of treasure. Ahhh, book booty:
- Title: Gourmet Rhapsody
- Author: Muriel Barbery
- ISBN: 9781933372952
- Binding: ARC
- Publisher: Europa Editions
- Pub Date: September 2009
- Pages: 141 (subject to change)
- Price: Free (and I also got a tiny little themed collection of food writing from several other Europa Editions books, with room to microscopically etch my own recipes at the end.)
- Obtained from: Penguin rep
- Synopsis: Prequel to The Elegance of the Hedgehog, this is the story of the end of the life of Monsieur Pierre Arthens, the greatest food critic in the world. In his last hours, he desires only one thing, one last taste of the sublime and singular flavor par excellence. The book follows Arthens from childhood to maturity through all manner of culinary delights, and in alternating chapters gives voice to a chorus of acquaintances, familiars, and even enemies.
- Title: Johannes Cabal the Necromancer
- Author: Jonathan L. Howard
- ISBN: 9780385528085
- Binding: ARC
- Publisher: Doubleday
- Pub Date: July 2009
- Pages: 290 (subject to change)
- Price: Free
- Obtained from: Random House rep
- Synopsis: Johannes Cabal is obsessed, body, heart, and mind, with raising the dead. He'd be obsessed by soul as well, if he hadn't traded it to the Devil in exchange for knowledge of the laws of necromancy. Unfortunately, it turns out he actually needs his soul for his experiments to succeed, so he travels to Hell and makes a wager with the Devil. He'll get his soul back if he can persuade 100 other people to give up theirs within a year. The jacket copy compares it to Wicked, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
- Title: A Book
- Author: Mordicai Gerstein
- ISBN: 9781596432512
- Binding: Hardcover
- Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
- Pub Date: April 2009
- Pages: 48
- Price: Free
- Obtained from: Macmillan rep
- Synopsis: Yes, I like children's books. What of it? This picture book is the story of a family that lives in a book. The father is a circus clown, the mother is a firefighter, the son grows up to be an astronaut, and even the pets know what their lives are about. The little girl, on the other hand, doesn't know what her story is supposed to be, so she goes exploring. Along the way, she passes through fairy tales, pirate adventures, historical novels, and science fiction, and none of them fit. At the end, as you might expect, she figures out what her story should be. The perspective of looking down into the book kind of reminds me of the Sims.
- Title: Karate Pig
- Author: Alan Katz
- Illustrator: Daniel Moreton
- ISBN: 9781416958260
- Binding: Board book
- Publisher: Little Simon
- Pub Date: April 2009
- Pages: 16
- Price: Free
- Obtained from: Simon & Schuster rep
- Synopsis: Yep. Another children's book. Karate Pig likes pork-chopping everything in sight. Thanks to the lift-flap, pull-tab nature of the book, he can even knock pieces of the pages off. At the end, he learns that the proper way to treat a book is to read it. I had to had to had to have this one just because of the title. Now that I've had time to sit down and read it (though I'm not planning on doing a full-on review of it), I can happily pass it along to someone who actually has children.
- Title: All-Star Batman & Robin
- Authors: Frank Miller
- Artist:Jim Lee
- ISBN: 9781401216818
- Binding: Hardcover
- Publisher: DC Comics
- Pub Date: July 2008
- Pages: 240
- Price: Free
- Obtained from: Random House rep
- Synopsis: Frank Miller gives us a grittier reinterpretation of the Boy Wonder's origin story
- Title: Amplified - Fiction from Leading Alt-Country, Indie-Rock, Blues, and Folk Musicians
- Editors: Julie Schaper & Steven Horwitz
- ISBN: 9781933633718
- Binding: Paperback
- Publisher: Melville House Publishing
- Pub Date: May 2009
- Pages: 229
- Price: Free
- Obtained from: Random House rep
- Synopsis: Short stories from a whole passel of musicians. I snagged this one because I actually recognized a few of the names.
- Title: Crazy for the Storm
- Author: Norman Ollestad
- ISBN: 9780061766725
- Binding: ARC
- Publisher: Ecco
- Pub Date: June 2009
- Pages: 272 (subject to change)
- Price: Free
- Obtained from: HarperCollins rep
- Synopsis: At the age of 11, Norman Ollestad was in a chartered Cessna with his father, his father's girlfriend, and the pilot. The plane crashed into an 8,600 foot mountain in a blizzard and only Norman survived. Alone, he had to make it down the mountain to safety.
- Title: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
- Author: Sherman Alexie
- ISBN: 9780316013697
- Binding: Paperback
- Publisher: Little Brown
- Pub Date: April 2009
- Pages: 230
- Price: Free
- Obtained from: Hachette Book Group rep
- Synopsis: Sherman Alexie's first YA novel. The story of a boy from the Spokane Indian Reservation who leaves the rez to attend an all-white school in the neighboring farm town where the only other Indian is the school mascot. Inspired by Alexie's own experiences growing up.
- Title: Monster
- Author: A. Lee Martinez
- ISBN: 9780316041263
- Binding: Hardcover
- Publisher: Orbit
- Pub Date: May 2009
- Pages: 304
- Price: Free
- Obtained from: Hachette Book Group rep
- Synopsis: Monster (he's human) runs a pest control agency, er, Cryptobiological Containment and Rescue Service, that specializes in the wee (and utterly gigantic) beasties that most folks consider mythological. Got a Yeti in your freezer, eating all your ice-cream (except vanilla. They don't like it.)? Call Monster. He'll fix the problem and you won't even remember it the next day. The jacket copy also mentions something about his girlfriend *literally* being from hell.
- Author: Muriel Barbery
Well, that about covers it. Would you believe there were another half dozen books on our wishlists that we weren't able to get?
2 comments:
Hah, I could have benefited from reading Karate Pig as a child, eh?
Another new one with much the same focus is Read It, Don't Eat It! I would like the "Don't Dog-Ear Pages" page as an Ex Libris sticker.
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