Have a look at my sack!

[muckefuck]

Yesterday, I bought so many books at Amaranth that they gave me a paper sack to take them away in. Normally I'd have my expandable shoulder back with me, but I don't normally break for a huge breakfast in the middle of the morning and then go for some retail therapy, so I was caught empty-handed. So here are the latest additions to my To-Read shelf:

1. Ste Claire, Dana M. Cracker: Cracker culture in Florida history The only non-fiction in the bunch. Pretty much the only interesting-looking book they had on Florida. It looks like it has some good detailed information on folkways even while it overstates the Cracker contribution to Florida history. Here's hoping the parts concerning relations with other marginalised groups aren't too squicky.
2. Faulkner, William. Mosquitoes Although it's not hard to name a Faulkner novel I haven't read, it's pretty rare to find one I haven't even bloody heard of. monshu confirms that it's a fun read, so I'm thinking to bring it along on the off chance that I finish Cloud Atlas sooner than I expect.
3. Chopin, Kate. Bayou Folk and A night in Acadie. Penguin omnibus. I've read about half of these already in my other collection of her work, but her output's small enough that I can't afford not to be a completist.
4. Toth, Emily. Kate Chopin Speaking of that other collection, it relied heavily on Toth for biographical information, so I suppose this is worth reading. I'm hoping to find out more about Chopin's life in St Louis, which doesn't really figure in her stories much.
5. Kiely, Benedict. Collected stories At $6 for this monster, that works out to less than a penny per page even once you add Cook County taxes. There wasn't much chance of me running out of Irish short stories next March, what with all the O'Brien, O'Connor, and, Somerville and Ross I've got left to read, but this clinches it.
6. Farrell, J.G. The siege of Krishnapur A little less than a year ago, danbearnyc asked me if I planned to read the rest of the Empire Trilogy and I was noncommittal. Well, I'm committing myself to this one at least. Of course, now that I've bought two volumes of a trilogy second-hand, there's no chance of me finding the third (unless of course Dan can somehow influence the movement of books from whatever better place he's gone on to).
7. Nguyễn, Khải Past continuous (Eng. trans. of Thời gian của người) This is the wild card in the bunch. I dimly recall hearing of the author before when reading potted histories of Vietnamese literature and it's a slim volume, so why not?

Comments

[danlmarmot.livejournal.com]

Cloud Atlas is a way fun book; I enjoyed it immensely.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

cpratt warned me that he read it basically in one go, which is why (a) it seems a good choice for vacation and (b) I thought I might need a back-up to avoid the horror of a three-hour flight back and nothing to read.

[areia.livejournal.com]

You're the second person I've heard mention Cloud Atlas in the space of 24 hours. I can take a hint. Off to the library (website)!

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

It was also in that list of 100 literary works(*) that oh_meow posted recently (and, thus, part of what made my score of "owned, not read" higher than "read").

(*) Term used very loosely, of course, since books by Dan Brown and Mitch Albom are on it.