Quick Reads: 55 Great Books Under 200 Pages!

Crunched for time and looking for some quick reads? Or just want to check out some great-but-short books? The Half Price Books blog has a great list of books under 200 pages. It included a wide variety of genres, from Siddhartha to Charlotte's Web.

Check out the full list here.

Designing "Lolita"

The New Yorker has an interesting little article regarding book cover design for the Vladimir Nabokov novel Lolita. Being a book lover and design major, I have no choice but to recommend it to you all.

Read it here.

My favorite of the covers featured:

(Cover by Jamie Keenan)

Book Carvings by Guy Laramee

View more:
The Great Wall series
Biblios series

Book Haul| June 18 - 24, 2012

Giveaway Wins
The Cranes Dance, by Meg Howrey
The Unfinished Garden, by Barbara Claypole White
Battleborn, by Claire Vaye Watkins
Buried on Avenue B, by Peter de Jonge
Long Time, No See, by Dermot Healy
In Your Face, by David Perrett

These all look so good!

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Thrift & New Purchases:
Letting Go, by Philip Roth
Emma, by Jane Austen
A Breath of Fresh Air, By Erica James
Poison, by Susan Fromberg Schaeffer

The top two are thrift. For the bottom two: apparently, a store near me gets discounted books. Both of these, though new, were just a dollar each. Thought I'd give them a shot.

Books That Shaped America

The Library of Congress, as part of a "Celebration of the Book" exhibition, has released a list of books that are considered to have had great influence in the United States.

“This list is a starting point,” said James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress. “It is not a register of the ‘best’ American books – although many of them fit that description. Rather, the list is intended to spark a national conversation on books written by Americans that have influenced our lives, whether they appear on this initial list or not.”

More titles can be nominated to the list through the Library of Congress' National Book Festival website.

Chick here to see the full list.

Have you read any of the books on this list? How would you say they shaped/influenced you?

Book Haul| June 4 - 10, 2012

Giveaway Wins
Why Do Women Crave More Sex in the Summer?, by Patricia Barnes-Svarney (Review coming soon!)
Vicious Little Darlings, by Katherine Easer (Already Reviewed!)
The Neruda Case, by Roberto Ampuero

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Purchased New
American Subversive, by David Goodwillie (Brand new and only a dollar! Couldn't pass it up.)

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Thrift Purchases
One Day, by David Nichols (Didn't see the movie, so the book isn't spoiled for me. Yay!)
The Lady in the Tower, by Jean Plaidy
The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett (Saw the mini-series, but this should still be good.)

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A more modest take compared to last week. Still, I'm running low on shelf space over here...

Book Haul| May 28 to June 3, 2012

Giveaway Wins
Memoirs of an Inaginary Friend, by Matther Dicks
12.21, by Dustin Thomas
Jasmine Nights, by Julia Gregson
The Cost of Hope, by Amamda Bennet

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Purchased New
The Successor, by Ismail Kadare
Daughter of Heaven, by Leslie Li
The Last song of Dusk, by Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi
The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches, by Gaétan Soucy
An Honorable German, by Charles McCain

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Thrift Purchases
Fever 1793, by Laurie Halse Anderson
The Girls Guide to hunting and Fishing, by Melissa Bank
The Last Olympian, by Rick Riordan
Homer's The Odyssey, translated by Robert Fagles
The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit, by Lucette Lagnado

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Books added to my shelves this past week. Really excited to get to reading them!

What books were added to your library?

These are the books I've won that arrived for the week of May 20 - 26.

I've been posting these weekly, but on various days. I'll stick to Sundays for consistency from here on out. Provided that I get books in the week, of course. Though thrift store books may be it's own feature. To be decided.

Anyway, I'm currently reading The Glimpse, by Claire Merle. Review for that to come soon.

New Arrivals

These came in the week of May 14-20. Already finished The Language of Flowers and wrote something resembling a review on Goodreads. Not sure if I'll post it on here, though. I finished The Night Circus as well. Better than expected.

I'm currently reading The Green Shore, by Natalie Bakopoulos, an arrival from last week.

Thrift Store Scores

Just bought all of these this morning, second hand.

So, yea..I might have problem...

or maybe not. All of these come up to a mere $8!

Two of them (The God of Small Things, and The Lightning Thief) are beautiful, like-new hardcovers. Most of the paperbacks are like-new or lightly worn. A few have damage, but still a pretty good deal, I think.

I know I shouldn't check books out of the library when I already have so much on my plate, but I just couldn't stop myself!

So much love for John Green these days. He rekindled my interest YA. As for The Night Circus, I've just heard so much about it, I figure I might as well give a shot and decide for myself whether it's any good.

My giveaway wins that arrived the week of May 7 - 12. Among them are ARC's and some self-published books. I know this stack makes it look like I win a ton, but I swear I don't. It's pure coincidence that they all came in the same week. Some of these wins are older then others.

Anyway, I've written reviews for two of them already: The Uninvited Guests and One Hundred Leaves. I'm currently working my way through the rest, and I hope to have most of them reviewed soon.

Cell-phone quality photo, I know, but I just wanted to give you (hypothetical readers) an idea of what happens when I step into a thrift store with a wall of books. And used book stores. And random stores with books stacked out front.

All of the books in this picture are from one trip to one store...

I love buying books second-hand. It's much cheaper, and you never know what gems you'll find!

I've won a few books from Goodreads. These three are the ones that have arrived so far. I've finished two of them: Strindberg's Star by Jan Wallentin, and I Am Bill Gates Dog by Jeffrey Zygmont. I'm now currently reading the third, House of Exile: The Lives and Times of Heinrich Mann and Nelly Kroeger-Mann by Evelyn Juers.

My review for Stringberg's Star can be found here. The review of I Am Bill Gates' Dog can be found here.

Side note: I'd like to get more critical in my reviews in the future. Reading over these, they're a bit too general for my liking.