Another trip to my fiancé’s lake house means another stop at my favorite bookstore: The Country Bookseller! It was technically out of the way since we didn’t go to my family’s lake house too, so we had to drive 20 minutes in the wrong direction on the way home. But my birthday is Monday, so my fiancé drove me as a birthday present. He’s the best. ❤
As always, I started off at the new releases display. And there was nothing that particularly interested me there. I read the summaries of a few, but they didn’t grab my attention. A woman came over while I was awkwardly taking pictures of ask if I needed help…no…just weirdly taking pictures for my blog…don’t mind me…
Once I went into the fiction section, I immediately zoned in on First, Become Ashes (which was shelved under K when it should have been under S, btw. I didn’t even realize until I was putting this post together). I bought Szpara’s first novel, Docile, at this store last summer, and I’ve been looking forward to this book so much. I was thrilled that they had it.
I came across two other books on my TBR, Piranesi by Susanna Clarke and If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha. I debated buying both of them for a while and even added Piranesi to my buy pile (carried by my lovely fiancé). But I changed my mind because I found the next book.
If you’ve been following my A Season in Middlemarch posts, you may know that I hate my current copy and wanted a new one. Lo and behold, they had a Penguin Classics copy! So because I actually need this, I put Piranesi back. I now have to go through and move all my annotations over to the new copy.
The Vegetarian by Han Kang is another on my TBR. It’s one that my favorite BookTubers, Kate Pfeil, has mentioned. I actually went to school with Kate and know she wrote on this book for our Animals and Postcolonialism class. She paired it with J. M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals. I actually held off on this because Coetzee’s books had such a big effect on me. Disgrace and The Lives of Animals made me think about becoming a vegetarian, but they also caused me to spiral into a period of depression. So I would like that to not happen again and am avoiding any books that may be similar.
And look at these pretty set of the Brontë sisters’ novels! I wasn’t thinking of buying them, but I needed a picture just because they’re lovely.
And then I hit the absolute jackpot because they had a third book I’ve been on the lookout for! I reviewed an ebook ARC of Heather Walter’s Malice, and I’ve wanted a physical copy since. It’s an excellent retelling of “Sleeping Beauty.” My plan is to reread it and write a Fairy Tale Friday post on it.
I took a look at Anne Youngson’s Meet Me at the Museum just because I liked the title and the color of the cover. It sounds like something I might enjoy, but it’s not what I’m in the mood for right now. I also admired this lovely copy of Villette. The only one of Charlotte Brontë’s novels I actually like is Jane Eyre, but I know I need to reread this for my comprehensive exams. I can’t annotate the copy I currently have, so I will need to buy another one. But I decided to hold off for now.
I popped over to the young adult section next. If they’d had the first book of Brigid Kemmerer’s series, I probably would have bought it. It’s been on my TBR for quite a while, and it’s a “Beauty and the Beast” retelling. I thought about getting both The Kingdom of Back by Marie Lu and The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly by Stephanie Oakes. The Kingdom of Back gives me Wintersong vibes, and The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly is a retelling of “The Girl Without Hands,” which is just…not a tale that gets retold ever. I kind of regret not buying them. But I can always get them on my next trip! (I’m sure there will be one.)
On my way to checkout, I impulse grabbed Mindhunter by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker. My fiancé and I love the Netflix series, and I think we can both enjoy this book (even though fiancé doesn’t really read.) Plus I’m in the mood for some nonfiction, but not book-related nonfiction, which is what I usually go for.
So that was an incredibly successful birthday shopping trip. And I’m on my way to another free book on my book buyer’s card!
A Literary Princess 