Book Weekend!

     This weekend was the family "book weekend" —my mother, sister, and I went to a beach house on Cape Cod to sit around reading books and drinking wine all weekend. (This is actually the first time I've gone, as I only recently moved back to Massachusetts, but it's been annual thing for them for years.) I was very much looking forward to this and packed a few of my "currently reading" titles as well as a new one that just came into the library (you never know what you're in the mood for!), plus a board game called Really Loud Librarians.

"The Games Gods Play" by Abigail Owen, "The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society" by C.M. Waggoner, "Chaos at the Lazy Bones Bookshop" by Emmeline Duncan, and "Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries" by Heather Fawcett

    But then, my "book weekend" became even more book-filled! Saturday morning before we set out, a local library was having their annual book sale and I stopped by. It took less than 15 minutes to fill my bags, because someone had donated their entire first edition hardcover collection of many of Anne McCaffrey's works! Believe it or not, I actually left over half still on the table, but I picked up some of my favorites that I saw (Acorna!) and a lot of Pern books I've been wanting to read. $2 for hardcovers and $1 for paperbacks, how could I not?

The list:

• Acorna, the Unicorn Girl by Anne McCaffrey and Margaret Ball
• The Girl who Heard Dragons by Anne McCaffrey
• Dragon's Kin by Anne McCaffrey and Todd McCaffrey
• Dragonseye by Anne McCaffrey
• The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall by Anne McCaffrey
• The Skies of Pern by Anne McCaffrey
• The Dolphins of Pern by Anne McCaffrey
• The Masterharper of Pern by Anne McCaffrey
• Dragonsdawn by Anne McCaffrey
• Pegasus in Space by Anne McCaffrey
• All the Weyrs of Pern by Anne McCaffrey
• The Renegades of Pern by Anne McCaffrey
• The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams
• Life, the Universe, and Everything by Douglas Adams
• Under the Whispering Door by T.J. Klune
• Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
• Animal Farm by George Orwell
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• The Martian by Andy Weir

    As you might imagine from this haul, I love Anne McCaffrey and I've read quite a lot of her books, but I don't remember which Pern books I've specifically read (aside from the Harper Hall Chronicles, which have remained on my shelves despite everything throughout the years). I was especially excited to find the first Acorna book, as that's a series that I read while it was releasing and LOVED. It was my first real foray into actual "spaceships in space" science fiction (the Pern books are technically scifi but read more fantasy, especially the Harper Hall trilogy), and it opened up a whole new genre for me to explore. And yet, not many people mention Acorna when they mention Anne's works (maybe because it was YA, maybe because it was later than most of her well-known stuff, maybe because a unicorn is "too girly", who knows?). And now I have to track down the rest of the series for my shelf and re-read. As for the others... I know that I haven't read The Masterharper of Pern before but always wanted to, since he's a figure in the Harper Hall trilogy, so that's probably what I'm going to start with when I get around to it.

    The copies of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe and Life, the Universe, and Everything are first editions (!), and the former is even a first printing (!!). It's amusing to see the cover of Life, the Universe, and Everything refer to Hitchhiker's as a trilogy, when we know now in the future that he wrote quite a few more stories in the series. I have The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide in a beautiful edition on my shelf that has all five books bound in one that I bought while in college, but the individual volumes are a wonderful addition. I wonder how much it would set me back to purchase the first edition Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to match the rest...

    

    I also spied a hardcover edition of Under the Whispering Door by T.J. Klune, so I grabbed that. Okay, it's autographed too, as a bonus, but mostly I wanted the hardcover to match the rest of my T.J. Klune shelf (aside from In the Lives of Puppets, which I do have in paperback... for now). I absolutely love this book (and author!), so I was disappointed that my local bookstore didn't have the hardcover copy on their display a few weeks ago and I had to get the paperback copy... but not anymore! As a bonus, I now have two T.J. Klune books to do a giveaway for once I've got this blog rolling. My paperback copy of Under the Whispering Door is brand new, I didn't read this copy (I borrowed it from the library in the spring), and I've got an extra copy of The House in the Cerulean Sea as well (I recently replaced it with the hardcover edition that re-released when its sequel came out last month). So... stay tuned for that, eventually. I've actually got a few books to give away down the line.

    So, after I rearranged my bookcases (again!) and put all my new acquisitions in their place (library tour coming Soon(tm)), we headed for the Cape... but wait! My mom wanted to stop at the outlet mall on the way down, and we pull in... and there's a Barnes & Noble there! We don't have a B&N near us, so I was very excited. (Note: I love our local independent bookstore and it's amazing, but they just don't have the shelf space and capital to keep older and less popular books in their inventory, so B&N fills that need for me.) Within minutes, I had filled my arms with books that I haven't been able to get at my indie store, had put some back, had selected more titles... you know how it goes. The cashier was very impressed with my selection, and I think he was trying to flirt with me but I am a dunce when it comes to that so I only realized much later after I had left. You know how it goes.

Manga: 

• Animal Crossing New Horizons Volume 4
• Fruits Basket Volume 1
• Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Volume 2
• Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Volume 4

Fiction:

• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin
• Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor
• Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami
• The Sun and the Star by Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro

    I have volumes 1-3 of the Animal Crossing manga, and volume 1 of the Sailor Moon manga, so I was excited to get more (although I have to track down volume 3 still). They had four volumes of the Fruits Basket manga but I held back (if you can believe it, I can show some form of restraint in bookstores... not much, but some). The Left Hand of Darkness is one of my favorite books of all time (I love LeGuin in general), I read it in college, but I gave that copy to my brother as a present one Christmas (when I was very poor, my brother often got some of my favorite science fiction books as presents) and hadn't replaced it yet. I've read Akata Witch about 10 years ago and have the next book in the series, Akata Warrior, sitting on my shelf waiting to be read... but since I read the first so long ago, I decided that I wanted to re-read it. (Also that I constantly recommend it to people who want fantasy written by non-white, non-American/European perspectives.) I remember it enough to recommend it and I honestly think that I would jump into the second fine, but... hey, nothing wrong with re-reading. As for Sputnik Sweetheart, that's a Murakami novel that I haven't read. They had almost his entire catalog on the shelf and I limited myself to just one so, again, I can exhibit a modicum of restraint in bookstores. And I finally bought The Sun and the Star, a standalone novel set in the Percy Jackson universe that Rick Riordan is famous for. This particular one is co-written by Mark Oshiro, who's been a friend of mine since 2011 or so, and I'm very excited to read it, but I've been making my way through the multiple series on audiobook before I open this. (I've read most of the first two series back when they were new, but wanted to refresh my memory.) Still, now it's on my shelf for when I do!

    Then, finally, we were really off to the beach house on the Cape, ready for a weekend of reading... and... we didn't get much reading done (lol!). Okay, the beach house is a very small house, and my mom is the kind of person who likes to always have the TV on, even if she's not watching anything. I, however, need the TV turned off unless I'm watching the thing. With my ADHD, I can't have talking happening when I'm trying to do other things (like read); either I end up just watching the TV (even if I'm not actually interested, which is often the case) or keep reading the same paragraph over and over. So, the only reading I got done all weekend was after my mom and sister went to bed (which was... very early compared to my night owl habits, so I did get some reading done, just not as much as expected). But Saturday night before my sister arrived, I introduced my mom to Leverage, one of my favorite shows of all time, and she was hooked by the third episode, so... success! And I put together a lego poinsettia set while we watched it.

    Sunday, the three of us played Really Loud Librarians, which was a TON of fun and I definitely recommend! We rounded out the night with a viewing of Hocus Pocus (I usually leave that for Halloween night itself, but the three of us couldn't agree on anything else lol), and then they went to bed at the SUPER early time of 8:30, so I was free to sip mead on the porch while I read for a couple hours. Saturday night's selection was The Games Gods Play, and Sunday's evening reading was Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries. I'm enjoying both, but I'm not as hooked on the Emily Wilde book as I expected to be, surprisingly. But still enjoying it, and I've already purchased the sequel, so that should say something (aside from the fact that I'm addicted to buying books, hopefully).

    We headed back from the beach house on Monday, and while that was technically the end of the "book weekend" (no, I didn't stop at Barnes and Noble on the way home!), I just received three books in the mail that I ordered on Friday, so I'm including them! I'll write more about Tamora Pierce later, but she's my favorite author and I've been reading her since I was 12. You can mostly figure out exactly when I started reading her by when the hardcover editions show up in my personal library (Emperor Mage, published 1995), with the exception that the next two books are paperback because I didn't buy them until later (but after that, I bought every single book on release day). 

my Tamora Pierce shelves (Tortall on top, Emelan on bottom) before my current hardcover project

    However, I did initially read the hardcover editions of the Immortals quartet from the library (as well as First Test), and I genuinely love the artwork for those covers (aside from whitewashing Numair), so I wanted to acquire them for my collection. After all, the artwork on the hardcover copy of Wild Magic is explicitly why I picked it up (it had a horse) and got me into fantasy in the first place! Well, I got that copy a few weeks ago, but today arrived the hardcover copies of Wolf-Speaker, The Realms of the Gods, and Melting Stones! I'll have to insert a picture of the whole collection tonight after work, but... my shelf is going to look so nice! (And yes, for those keeping track at home, that means I now have three different editions of The Realms of the Gods, thanks to my desire to try to find matching editions of series at thrift stores.)

    I'm so happy about this! All I have left to get is the hardcover editions of the Song of the Lioness quartet. Unfortunately for me, hardcover first editions go for waaaay more than I'm able to spend ($1500 for Alanna: The First Adventure!), but they did do a hardcover re-release in 2014 that I've been eyeing on abebooks, so we'll see. And I don't have The Circle of Magic and The Circle Opens in hardcover but with the exception of Sandry's Book, I read those all in paperback so I'm not as concerned about getting the hardcover editions (aside from wanting to have matching series eventually). My paperback copy of Melting Stones had unfortunately gotten the back cover ripped off during a move, so I was happy to replace it with the hardcover but the damage means I won't be giving it away (sorry! Also that it's very far into a series). 

    And thus concludes Book Weekend.