What was the last book you bought?

I bought The Exiles about five minutes ago. It’s going to be a gift for a young cousin of mine, and I chose it because I loved it when I was her age. It’s a book about sisters (she has those), books (she likes those), and it’s a lot of fun (always good).

Bought it from Amazon.

a reference manual for autolisp

For Christmas, one of the gifts I got for my sister is the last book that Terry Pratchett wrote and I bought it from Amazon.

For myself, the last book I bought was The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. Also bought from Amazon.

Friday:
iWoz, by Steve Wozniak and Gina Smith. Engineer Wozniak tells of his childhood spent building electronic contraptions, designing calculators and rudimentary computers on a par with Hewlet Packard, 1958–1968. He tells how he designed and built digital “blue boxes” (the illegal aparatii used by the underground to make free, untraceable, long-distance phone calls during the Vietnam War) in his dorm room at Berkeley while high schooler Steve Jobs sold them around the San Francisco Area. The proceeds were used to finance the production of the planet’s first affordable personal computers through their new start-up company, Apple Computers—and together they changed the whole world.

2006, Hardcover, Used. Fifty cents American.

The very latest one just arrived today. It’s one in the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher. I ordered a used hardcover online from an Amazon Marketplace vendor.

The reason I bought it instead of getting it from the library is that this is the kind of easy, escapist reading I like to just keep on hand to resort to as needed, most likely late at night, when I suddenly need a break from weightier reading matter.

I still buy several physical books a month, even though I try to use the library for most of my reading needs. Most of the time I buy them only if the library doesn’t have them.

I do buy e-books from time to time, too, but those don’t count as “buying books” to me, not yet.

An audiobook cassette set of Dune: House Corrino, as read by Tim Curry. I bought it from a local thrift store.

As far as an actual paper book, I grabbed something called How to Think Like Sherlock. That came from the Friends of the Library bookstore.

It was my algebra textbook for my algebra class. I bought it from an eBay seller.

Swift OS X Programming for Absolute Beginners. I can’t buy anything from Amazon anymore (Forgot about a unused EC2 instance and was charged 400 I never paid).

Had my mom buy it for me from Amazon. I chose it beucase I need books to learn programing stuff. Without books I copy and paste and never really understand why things do what they do.

The 2015 International Residential Code for One- and Two-Family Dwellings. Kind of like ROUS’s only it’s just IRC’s. New sells for $150. I got it for $fiddy bucks,$ used. Came today and it’s in perfect condition. I bought it from Amazon as a Christmas present for my son.

That sounds fascinating @Espiritus_Corvus.

A German edition of the Book of Mormon.
Well, I did not actually buy it. It was given to me by a group of Mormon missionaries.
It is still collecting dust.

What color is your parachute 2016. From coles.

The Art of Racing in the Rain I bought it at the airport book store before I boarded the plane. Fabulous book…one I read straight through.

@Seek Dune was good past dune messiah?

Bed of Nails. Saw it on the “Foreign books” self in the bookstore. That book was in English, which was a delight. Later I found out that the book is very hard to torrent, which made it even more valuable. It seems to have been sold out now.

Cast Iron Nation a cookbook for using cast iron pans and dutch ovesn.

A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny. I’m working my way through the Inspector Gamache series. Barnes and Noble.

@ARE_you_kidding_me – I’m about 20 pages to the end of God Emperor of Dune now, and still enjoying the story. I’m the local Dune fangirl. It’s become kind of a thing.

Good choice @Seek, started reading Frank Herbert 50 years ago.

Study Chess With Tal, by Mikhail Tal
and

The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes, by Conevery Bolton Valencius

The Quilter’s Legacy by Jennifer Chiaverini. It’s one of a series of books written by the same author that all have quilting as a theme in the story. They’re interesting stories about women and how they end up coping with all sorts of different problems, big and small, and how they confide in each other. I got it at the Salvation Army for $1, but I would have paid full price for it from Amazon, if I had known how good it was going to be.

The Eye of Zoltar by Jasper Fforde. The wait for the next book in the Thursday Next series is killing me, so I decided to try his Chronicles of Kazam series. This is book three. I haven’t started it because I’m reading Herman Wouk’s War and Remembrance. I finished Winds of War and need to know what happens to this family.

@ragingloli

I bought tickets to The Book of Mormon a couple of years ago. Inside the Playbill was a full page, color ad for the book Book of Mormon. I gotta give the LDS Church kudos for being good sports about it.

Social Movements and Protest (for my Kindle).

and

Street Photography: The Art of Capturing the Candid Moment (real book).

I bought Ivanhoe and Two years before the Mast as part of the Christmas loot for the grandson.

Two Years Before the Mast is excellent.

Carstairs: A Butler’s Life
I bought it for my housestaff to remind them of their dedication to servitude, damn blighters asked for a xmas bonus in their wages this month…tsk, tsk.

@stanleybmanly & @Darth_Algar:
Two Years Before the Mast, fully illustrated 1899 copy, free pdf download

I bought ‘Seductive Poison’ from Amazon last week. It is an account of the Jim Jones ‘Peoples Temple’ cult. The author, Deborah Layton says ’ no one actually joins a “cult”. People join groups that they think will help them, not hurt them.’

That’s true. They don’t think it’s a cult.

I just “bought” about 25 free sample Kindle e-Books for my kid. People write unofficial Minecraft-based books, offer the first half for free, and then hope you buy the second half.

Ian just devours them.

Snow on the Lindis : My Life at Morven Hills Station
A Christmas present for my mother.

@flutherother, I’ve read quite a few books about Jim Jones and the People’s Temple and about destructive cults in general. I think Deborah Layton’s did more than any other to help me understand how people get drawn into an environment like that and what happens to them once they’re in it.

@Jeruba That’s what I find interesting too, how people get drawn into these cults and then find it so difficult to leave. PS. Did you see the PBS documentary on Jonestown.

@flutherother This might be worth a separate thread, don’t you think?

I bought a book on cattle care. I am currently doing a course to add to my animal care qualifications and would like to learn more about milk cattle.

The Purpose Driven life and some books on logic and Buddhism.

The last book I bought is “Atlant Shrugged” by Ayn Rand
It is an excellent book for workaholics :)

It’s also a handy tome for sociopaths and those with no conscience.

Today I received “Easy to make Macrame pot holders.” It’s an original print from 1974. I’m pretty sure my dad had that same exact book at one time, when he was into making macrame holders when they were all the rage in the 70s. I got it for my chair bound daughter. I’ll be supplying her with jute and beads, too.

@Darth Algar If you’re enjoying Tal’s book (and even if you aren’t) try to grab a copy (if you haven’t already) of Alekhine’s “My Best Games of Chess”. The book is a gem for the sheer wit in the master’s commentary and analysis. You have to be careful in buying used copies, because the early paperback editions were often broken up into 3 volumes. If you can get your hands on a copy and can stand around perusing it, I guarantee you’ll chuckle.

@stanleybmanly

I’m sure that’ll end up on my “to read” list at some point. No worries about buying an early edition though. I pretty much only buy something if it’s in algebraic notation (fortunately many of the old classics have in recent years been transposed from descriptive over to algebraic).

As you might guess from my avatar, however, Tal is kinda my favorite player. A heavy-drinking, chain-smoking, morphine-addicted master with a deformed hand, who’s games often seem counter-intuitive and who just got crazier looking the older he got (and looked far older than he was). What’s not to love?

A copy of Don Quixote that is in Spanish. It was a gift for the SO who is attempting to learn the language. It was purchased from Amazon.

Cancer Killers

Mentats of Dune, and a book on medieval music.

Frankie and Bobby Growing up Zappa The story of Frank Zappa’s boyhood told by his younger brother.

The psychology book.

Star Wars: Bloodline by Claudia Gray

I bought two books by Geert Lovink about tactical media. I’m writing a paper.

I also bought a thriller called Dark Waters. I think I found that through Book Bub. I like to have lots of novels to choose from.

“Star Wars: Bloodline by Claudia Gray”

Which I actually just finished awhile ago. Now on to something less fluffy (though not my most recent purchase): The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes by Conevery Bolton Valencius.

Man-Kzin Wars XIV

The last book I bought was On Food and Cooking.

I’ve just started reading The High Mountains of Portugal which I downloaded to my Kindle.

A 1915 first edition, signed copy of Spoon River Anthology arrived last week. I haven’t read it since I was twenty, but it meant a lot to me at the time. I spent that summer between semesters with my girlfriend living in a tent under a big redwood tree high above the Pacific, and being harassed nightly by a bobcat. We read the book at night to each other under the golden glow of an oil lamp. It was the perfect place and time for it and the story of Spoon River told in a string of poetic epitaphs of it’s people stuck with me all these years.

About two weeks ago after not thinking of it in decades, I saw it for sale on the net and capriciously bought it with money that really should be put elsewhere. I read it the afternoon it arrived and it is even better now that I have lived a full life in the interim.

It would be criminal of me to keep this treasure in this climate. Books don’t do well here. It is in pristine condition with just a little discoloration in one corner of the dust jacket. It was signed and dated by Masters in December 5th, 1941, a Friday. On Sunday afternoon, in only 48 hours, all the radios in the States would be blaring reports of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the world as Masters and his fan knew it would radically change forever. There are notations by the anonymous former owner in light pencil throughout the book. It is a jewel.

I know exactly who I will send it to for Christmas. She is now a grandmother in Seattle and loved this book as I did under that big tree so many years ago. In the meantime, I will cherish it and care for it and oh, so responsibly, let it go.

@Espiritus_Corvus, you must come back to this thread after next Christmas and tell us how she received this lump-in-the-throat romantic present after so very long.

@Espiritus_Corvus, that is such an incredibly romantic story. I hope she loves your gift.

Wow @Espiritus_Corvus…..

I bought a book on a whim at the drug store called, “Jokes for kids,” for my 8 year old grandson, who struggles with humor. I rarely, rarely see him laugh spontaneously. I swear, I’ve seen that, maybe, 3 times in his life. The majority of the time he only laughs if people around him laugh, but his laugh is obviously fake because he doesn’t know what people are finding so funny.

So, I bought that book for him…...

I just bought “A Brief History of the Dead”, just because I keep hearing Jellies gush about it. I’m curious to see whether I will love it, too!

And another one bites the dust.

It won’t be here for a couple of weeks, but I’ll let you know! I’m starved for good books, so it’s likely.

Something under the bed is drooling… a Calvin and Hobbes book.

MY GRANDSON LAUGHED!! We went to “babysitter” the 4 kids, ranging in age from 1 year, to my grandson at 8 years. His 4 year old sister asked where the folks went, and I said they went to Walmart to get some new kids.
Her eyes opened wide for a second…but big brother chuckled!!! It was great.

This thread still has steam?

“My Brilliant Friend” by Elena Ferrante. Bought yesterday.

Found a 1965 copy of Emily Post’s Etiquette.

The Arms of Krupp, by William Manchester, 1968, Hardcover, heavily indexed, good condition, $1.00. This is one thousand pages of the best history (by one of my favorite biographers/historians) of the Wilhelmine dynasty (Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm I and II) and it’s armorer, the causes and ramifications of Bismark’s rise and his policies, the Franco-Prussian War and these events’ relationships to WWI, the Wiemar Republic, the rise of Hitler and WWII that I have ever read.

If William Manchester had written the textbooks for our history classes, Americans would be so much more well informed and understand intimately the linkage of world events instead of being forced to memorize a tedious, mind-numbing list of seemingly unrelated dates. Like Tuchman, this author of The Death of a President and biographies of the Rockefellers, JFK, H.L. Mencken, and so many others, makes history so intimately real that you can touch it, live it, be right in the middle of it.

Decent From Glory: Four Generations of the John Adams Family, by Paul C. Nagel, 1983, Hardcover, 400 pages, indexed, good condition, $1.00. I have only scanned this book so far. I am so hung up on Manchester’s book as described above that I keep going back to it. I can’t get my nose out of it. But the notes on the dust cover of this book is what sold me.

From the dust cover:
“The public lives of John Adams and his descendants made them America’s most distinguished family. But what of their private world? What was it like to be part of such an eminent lineage, which included presidents, diplomats, and renowned historians? Descent from Glory answers these questions in rich, perceptive detail, unfolding the Adams saga from 1735 to 1927.

“Charles Francis Adams, John’s grandson, revealed as much as he dared when he observed that his family history was ‘one of great triumphs in the world but of deep groans within, one of extraordinary brilliancy deep corroding mortification.’ His sons then sealed the family’s enormous collection of letters and diaries for fifty years; these papers remained unopened until our era. Mining this rich trove, Paul C. Nagel presents a new and thoroughly absorbing view of the Adamses as husbands and wives, parents and children.

“Here are all the Adamses through four generations: the great and near-great along with the spendthrifts, misfits, alcoholics, and neurotics…”

A few years ago I discovered a couple of books by Edith Gelles (Ph.D, Cornell, Yale, U of C-Irvine and Senior Scholar, Stanford’s Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research.): Abigail Adams, a Writing Life and Abigail and John: A Portrait of a Marriage. Gelles uses the newly released papers and correspondence between Abigail and John Adams to examine both their lives together as well as the Revolution. Most poignantly, I remember Abigail ended many of her letters to John (while he was away in Philadelphia defining this nation’s revolutionary constitution, laws and freedoms) with this gentle, but urgent missive:

“Please remember the Ladies, John.”

And thus I became hooked on the history of the Adamses.

I just got “more money than brains” Why school sucks , college is crap & IDIOTS think they’re right by Laura Penny. In the mail from Amazon. for $0.01 plus shipping.