It seems I allowed myself to get a little carried away last month, as I’m surprised by how many books I ended up picking up, and I have a nagging suspicion that I’m forgetting one or two (as usual). I can’t just blame thrift shopping this time either, as I’ve picked up more than one brand new book rather impulsively.

Let’s check out these books.

New Books

Getting these two out of the way first, Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White and the first volume of The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords by Akira Himekawa were both gifts from some friends of mine. The latter they had decided to get rid of and asked if I wanted it, which I accepted, and the former they came across while browsing a thrift store on their own and decided to get it for me, as I’d mentioned in the past that I keep meaning to get a copy. I’m very grateful for these.

A Guest in the House by Emily Carroll is a horror graphic novel that just came out back in August; somehow I missed out on hearing about it. I really enjoyed some of the author’s previous work, so I decided to race out and impulsively pick this up. It was sold out online but available in a nearby store, and that was somehow enough to convince me I needed to buy it now.

Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer was a book I somewhat had to convince myself to pick up. Though I’m a big fan of the author’s Quintaglio Ascension trilogy, I’ve never really gotten into anything else he’s written. However, this is the book he won both the Hugo and Nebula awards for, which has me really intrigued. The premise sounds really intriguing as well, involving an old couple receiving the opportunity to have their youth restored but an accident resulting in it only working for one of them.

I picked up a used copy of Hellboy: The All-Seeing Eye by Mark Morris online, after feeling a sudden renewed interest in getting more of the Hellboy novels. I don’t really know what this one is about, I just found one at an acceptable price and decided to grab it.

Last month, I wrote in the “Novel Discoveries” section about Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, a book about people using a cafe to time travel, only being allowed to do so until their coffee gets cold. Well, it turns out that Indigo was selling a promotional hardcover for a pretty good price, so I decided to run out and pick it up. I’m curious enough about it that I want to push myself to read it this year too.

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin and The Neverending Story by Michael Ende were complete impulse purchases, pure and simple. I saw them both at a thrift shop, thought they were in decent shape, and thought “I’ve heard of these, what the hell” and picked them up. I can’t pretend anything else compelled me in that moment, except perhaps some recalled analysis about the latter that still lingers in the mind. Looking back, I kind of wish I hadn’t grabbed a copy of the former with such a boring cover, but here we are.

Novel Discoveries

The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer is not a book I can remember a lot about, though I know it is YA fantasy, but I’m curious about it because a friend of mine liked it a lot when they were younger and recently reread it. I was checking the copy at their place and decided to scan it into my Goodreads to-read list.

Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel is a book I learned about from The Ghost: A Cultural History by Susan Hill, which actually gets into a lot of art and literature about ghosts. I can’t actually remember what about it caught my eye, and the synopsis is not being helpful, but considering this is one of only a couple that I set aside to be remembered from that book definitely means something.

The other book that I wanted to keep in mind is Ghosts of an Antiquary, which is a graphic collection adapting ghost stories by M.R. James, an author that was brought up often in Hill’s book. I wouldn’t be surprised if I have access to some of James’s ghost stories in books I own already, but the idea of a comic book adaptation has me really interested.

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Until next time, thank you for reading!