Recent Arrivals and a Bookstore Story

The local public library is my primary source for books, but I do buy or otherwise acquire books from time to time.  These are new arrivals to the apartment over the past month:

On Memorial Day weekend, I spent a little time at Shiretown Books in Woodstock, VT.  The atmosphere was friendly and I liked the selection.  I ended up purchasing three books: The Places In Between by Rory Stewart, A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute, and Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell.  I’ve read A Town Like Alice before, when I was in high school.  This edition’s cover is quite attractive, and the cover of Cranford even more so.  Both the woman working at the store (who may have been the proprietor) and I admired it.

On the subject of covers, she mentioned that she really liked Europa Editions, which I had never heard of, but looked up when I returned home from vacation.  Here is their website: http://www.europaeditions.com/

I received Valeria’s Last Stand by Marc Fitten from Goodread’s First Reads.  I entered into the giveaway because I was intrigued by the story’s setting in a Hungarian village after the fall of the Soviet Union.  I started reading the first chapter while waiting for my car’s oil change, and it’s quite funny.  I look forward to returning to it in the near future.

Buying Time by Pamela Samuels Young arrived thanks to Tracee of Pump Up Your Book Promotion.  I’ve never participated in a virtual book tour before, but I was intrigued by the premise and the author’s bio and thought I’d check it out.

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore arrived courtesy of the publisher, NYRB.  I had participated in the Spotlight Series when NYRB was the selected small press, reviewing Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book.  [Note: The Summer Book came from the public library, not the publisher.]

It’s not an expectation that publishers provide Spotlight Series participants with anything.  So it was a pleasant surprise when I heard that NYRB was going to give a little gift package to all those who posted reviews as part of the Spotlight Series.  A copy of the New York Review of Books and a NYRB shopper bag were also included in the package.

The back cover summary of The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne gives little away, but as I’ve loved the previous two NYRB books I’ve read, I have high hopes for this one.

Which brings me to two books that just came today!  I really want to read current “it” book, The Passage by Justin Cronin, and I know there’s no way I can read all of this chunkster during one library loan period.  So I decided to go ahead and buy it when I saw it in the bookstore today.

Thanks to some credit card reward points that can take the form of Amazon gift cards, Sara Wheeler’s Evia: Travels on an Undiscovered Greek Island arrived today in the mail.  Seems like a perfect summer book!