Library Sale 2014... A "Haul Post"

          The summer has officially begun!
          And not because classes are finally, finally over.  No.  The summer has begun because my co-blogger Grace and I went to our annual library sale this weekend!

           This tradition, in which I force Grace to take me to her country house (which was built in the 1700s'!) so we can go to the Stone Ridge Library sale, is quite central to our friendship and, furthermore, provides me with a security net of books that I can dip into at any time for the rest of the year.  It's MUUUCH cheaper than going to Barnes and Nobles every time I finish a book, that's all I can say.
          So this is a list of what I picked up this year!
1. From Rockaway by Jill Eisenstadt - Rockaway is my beach!  I spend pretty much all summer there, so I had to read this.
2. Handbook of Short Story Writing: Volume II, edited by Jean M. Fredette - If I'm going to spend all my free time writing reams of short stories, I need to know how to write them properly.
3. The Best American Short Stories 1992, edited by Robert Stone - Same as above.  The best way to learn to write, besides actually writing, is to read!
4. Fat Kid Rules the World by K.L. Going - I've heard of this book, and the title is great, so why not?
5. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Well, I've already posted about my love of magical realism, and Marquez has a special place in the Magical Realism Hall of Fame, so I was very happy to find this book.  (Just kidding, there is no such Hall.  But there should be.)
6. Rainbow Boys by Alex Sanchez - I saw this book as a hardcover in Barnes and Nobles, but it was probably twenty dollars at the time.  So I bided my time and got it for two dollars instead.  I am an unabashed cheapskate!!!!
7. Save Yourself by Kelly Braffet - Looks weird and creepy, so it's bound to be just my cup of tea.
8. The Plague by Albert Camus - I do love my existentialists.  I read The Stranger, another one of his books, earlier this year.
9. Dubliners by James Joyce - It was Bloomsday quite recently, which got me thinking that I have never read anything by James Joyce.  This is one of his most famous books.
10. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden - This one weighs about a million pounds but it looks so good.  Here is a quote from the blurb: "In Memoirs of a Geisha, we enter a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned as an illusion."
11. The Practical Encyclopedia of Feng Shui by Gill Hale - I intend to shui-ify my house immediately!
12. The Territory of Men: A Memoir by Joelle Fraser - I picked this up because it is about a daughter of hippies growing up in the sixties', a decade that fascinates me.  I'm reading it now, and so far it has not disappointed.  It certainly doesn't romanticize the decade - I'd say that the writer is lucky to be alive and in decent mental health! - and yet there is something beautiful in the writing and in the openness and freedom of her mother's lifestyle.  
          Remember to read this summer.  And also to eat ice cream at odd hours of the day.  And to surf.  And to install central cooling.  
          - Carly