Whoops... More Books

A few days ago I mentioned that myself and Jackie from Farmlanebooks were planning to read all the Man Booker winners. We still haven’t come up quite with the how’s and the when’s but one thing that we did do last week is compare how many books we have both already and my five to her fifteen seems a little pathetic. So I naturally have some catching up to do. I also have quite a lot of books to get my hands on. So whilst taking a break from the latest Savidge Reads Big Weekender Read (which is Memoirs of a Midget by Walter de la Mare) I met up with a friend and we hit my favourite second hand book shop and look what I managed to find…

Seven of the Man Booker winners that I didn’t already own (ok actually in the first shop I only found four I found another three in a charity shop that was having a half price sale on books for the day) so now I have gained Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald, The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell, Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively, The History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey, The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje, Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth and Vernon Little God by DBC Pierre. Now those of you who know me well and those of you who may have seen something behind the books in the above picture (not the fish, there’s a clue) will see that that’s not quite all I bought.
Yes I bought just a few more books. My aim and mission was for Man Booker Winners only however I then saw The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant which was shortlisted for the Man Booker so I thought that sort of counted. I always like the shortlisted books. I also saw Theft by Peter Carey which of course says “twice winner of the Booker Prize” all over it, so that sort of counted too. I spotted two more Prize Winner related books (which is sort of a good excuse) Bel Canto by Ann Patchett which won the Orange Prize in 2002, I am thinking of doing all those winners at some point. There was also Drown the debut by Junot Diaz who won this years Pulitzer Prize with his second book The Brief But Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao’ which I will be reading very soon. The other two books? Well those I blame on some of you, the delightful Dot Scribbles absolutely raved about She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb and Harriet Devine has been raving about Henning Mankell’s Wallander series the first of which is Faceless Killers. Now having totally scrapped my original reason for book shopping I thought in for a penny in for a pound…
And I got five more books (partly because the shop that normally does 5 books for £2 was actually doing 15 for £3 this weekend to get rid of as much stock as possible before they move over the road) that I just plain and simply wanted to read. I have been after a copy of Black Dogs by Ian McEwan for ages as I am a big fan of his work, Scoop by Evelyn Waugh has been on my hit list for ages as has The Secret Life of Bee’s by Sue Monk Kidd. I loved Pilcrow by Adam Mars Jones earlier this year and him writing with Edmund White who’s works I like seemed like a great collection of co-written short stories, plus its quite hard to get. While England Sleeps by David Leavitt was an accidental purchase as I got Leavitt mixed up with David Ebershoff who wrote The 19th Wife but never mind, after all this whole collection only set me back £5.50. No more buying books for a very long time I think. Did I make good choices? Have you bought any great bargains lately? I have seen Dovegreyreader has had a similar shopping experience to me this weekend, have any of you?