I bought two children's books:
- Vampireology and
- Dragonology by Dugald Steer, in Icelandic translations.
These are gorgeous books and I was happy to find them cheap and in good second-hand condition (although the block is beginning to come loose from the spine on Dragonology, but I can fix that with my bookbinding knowledge). I love books like this: full of images and maps and stuff like envelopes and flaps and hidden text. It's one of the reasons why I'm dithering about culling the Griffin and Sabine books from my collection.
Once I have read them they will be going on the shelf where I keep books I draw inspiration from when I'm drawing.
Then I got a bunch of guide books and one cultural trivia book:
- A guide to the Sanssouci palace and gardens in Potsdam, which is one of the stops on my projected tour of Germany next spring.
- A guide to Bamberg, another stop on that trip.
- A guide to Hong Kong.
- A guide to Trier, which is one of my possible stops on the Germany tour.
- A guide to the Rhine Valley, which I will definitely visit, and
- A humorous guide to Britishness.
As I mentioned in yesterday's post on guide book collecting, I like to buy second-hand older guide books, especially ones for places I'm planning to visit, which I can use as a source of photos and maps for travel journals. Therefore it doesn't matter if they are in languages I don't understand well (or not at all), as is the case with the Potsdam-Sanssouci guide, which is in Spanish (a language I have not studied), and the Trier guide, which is in German (which I can read but am not fluent in). The Rhine Valley book dates back to 1988, but still has valid information on the area. The Bamberg book is more recent and so is the Hong Kong book, although it will probably be fairly old by the time I actually do visit that city. Finally, Rules Brittania seems to be one of those informative and entertaining little books one likes to keep by one's bedside to read before going to sleep.
Finally I got a mixed bag of fiction and non-fiction:
- A biography of the Mitford sisters. Having become acquainted with Jessica and Nancy through their writing made me want to read something about them.
- The Satanic Verses has been on my reading list for a long time.
- The Stefan Zweig book is an Icelandic translation of The World of Yesterday. My father, who does not often express his opinions of the books he reads, says it is the best book he's ever read, so I will probably read it fairly soon.
- The Crow Road and The Business: I enjoyed The Wasp Factory and always wanted to read more by Banks.
- Phallological Museum seems to be a history and discussion of the Icelandic museum of the same name, with an introduction to phallology. While I have not visited the museum (finding it morbid) the subject is interesting.
- Death Comes to Pemberley: I had sworn not to read any more Jane Austen spin-offs, but then I though "why not? It's an author I'm familiar with and how bad can it be?" I hope I will not come to regret it.
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