I’ve stated on this blog repeatedly that I am a library user. I don’t buy a lot of books. But in the past few weeks I’ve found myself in the possession of a whole lot of books. I was going to write a post about how I am now on a strict #readmyowndamnbooks schedule. I’m not adding any more books to my TBR pile. I’m not looking at all your lovely suggestions. I can not be moved! Well, you’ll see what happened.
First up was a swap.
Then I happened to see a tweet asking if anyone wanted to review a book that I was really excited about.
Then my OTSP Secret Sister went on an amazing gifting spree.
I got an ebook a day.
AfroSF: Science Fiction by African Writers by Ivor W. Hartmann
“AfroSF is the first ever anthology of Science Fiction by African writers only that was open to submissions of original (previously unpublished) works across Africa and abroad.“
The Quaker Café by Brenda Bevan Remmes
“When Liz Hoole, a free-spirited liberal from the Midwest, marries into a conservative Quaker family, she knows that raising children in compliance with Quaker values will be challenging. Twenty-five years later, she still feels like she’s falling short of expectations.”
“The seventh sister is over the moon for a Costa Rican coffee farmer. In the spring of 1984, John Mallory, the seventh sister in a coffee family dies a legend when she is uprooted from Kansas City and travels to a coffee farm in Costa Rica to become a Roastmaster. Now, eighteen years later, Capri is connected to her dead aunt through a surreal sense of smell. When Capri runs away with her boyfriend, she unearths John Mallory’s story and the myth of the Pleiades, a cluster of blue stars known as the Seven Sisters. But her quirky mother, grandfather and five aunts fear love will also lead Capri to an early grave.”
“A library apprentice, a sorcerer prince, and an unbreakable magic bond…
The Solaris Empire is one conquest away from uniting the continent, and the rare elemental magic sleeping in seventeen-year-old library apprentice Vhalla Yarl could shift the tides of war.”
Sofia Khan is Not Obliged by Ayisha Malik
“Unlucky in love once again after her possible-marriage-partner-to-be proves a little too close to his parents, Sofia Khan is ready to renounce men for good. Or at least she was, until her boss persuades her to write a tell-all expose about the Muslim dating scene.”
She followed that up with this.
Consider that I also picked these books up from the library this week because I already had them on hold.
Love, Loss, and What We Ate: A Memoir by Padma Lakshmi
“Long before Padma Lakshmi ever stepped onto a television set, she learned that how we eat is an extension of how we love, how we comfort, how we forge a sense of home—and how we taste the world as we navigate our way through it. Shuttling between continents as a child, she lived a life of dislocation that would become habit as an adult, never quite at home in the world. And yet, through all her travels, her favorite food remained the simple rice she first ate sitting on the cool floor of her grandmother’s kitchen in South India.”
Midnight Taxi Tango by Daniel José Older
“Carlos Delacruz straddles the line between the living and the not-so alive. As an agent for the Council of the Dead, he eliminates New York’s ghostlier problems. This time it’s a string of gruesome paranormal accidents in Brooklyn’s Von King Park that has already taken the lives of several locals—and is bound to take more.”
So you can see that I am overflowing with wonderful reading material that got here just in the last week. But I made a mistake this morning. I accidentally looked at the Book Bub email I got. That’s a list of free and cheap ebooks.
The Pygmy Dragon by Marc Secchia
“Yesterday, a Dragon kidnapped me from my cage in a zoo.
Stolen from her jungle home and sold to a zookeeper, Pip knows only a world behind bars, a world in which a Pygmy warrior and her giant ape friends are a zoo attraction. She dreams of being Human. She dreams of escaping to the world outside her cage.”
“In 2009, New York Times bestselling author Eloisa James took a leap that many people dream about: she sold her house, took a sabbatical from her job as a Shakespeare professor, and moved her family to Paris. Paris in Love: A Memoir chronicles her joyful year in one of the most beautiful cities in the world.”
Wicked Good by Susan Kiernan-Lewis
“Liddy James put off her dream of owning her own French cupcake shop for 25 years. Now a widow and an empty nester, she knows if she’s ever going to do it, she better make it happen soon. 
Unfortunately, there are a few roadblocks in her path to finally achieving her dream. One is a sexy DEA Agent dealing with the local meth problem who obviously wants her–but preferably not living in the same town. Another is a cantankerous elderly mother who refuses to play fair. Finally, there are the townspeople of Infinity, Georgia, who want nothing to do with her fancy cupcakes or her big city ways. 
In fact, someone in particular is determined to help Liddy go back where she came from…the hard way.”
Bon Bons to Yoga Pants by Katie Cross
“Lexie Greene has always had such a pretty face.
Unfortunately, that’s where it seemed to stop. She’s grown up hearing her Mother constantly remind her that she needs to lose weight. And twenty-three-year-old Lexie knows she’s overweight.
With her younger sister’s wedding on the horizon and a crush to stalk on Facebook, Lexie’s had enough. She gives up her constant daydreams about food and joins a dieting group. As the pounds melt away at the gym, she finds that life on the other side of junk food isn’t what she thought.”
Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman: Portrait of an American Hero by Kate Clifford Larson
“Harriet Tubman is one of the giants of American history—a fearless visionary who led scores of her fellow slaves to freedom and battled courageously behind enemy lines during the Civil War. And yet in the nine decades since her death, next to nothing has been written about this extraordinary woman aside from juvenile biographies. The truth about Harriet Tubman has become lost inside a legend woven of racial and gender stereotypes. Now at last, in this long-overdue biography, historian Kate Clifford Larson gives Harriet Tubman the powerful, intimate, meticulously detailed life she deserves.”
Black Titan: A.G. Gaston and the Making of a Black American Millionaire by Carol Jenkins
“The grandson of slaves, born into poverty in 1892 in the Deep South, A. G. Gaston died more than a century later with a fortune worth well over $130 million and a business empire spanning communications, real estate, and insurance. Gaston was, by any measure, a heroic figure whose wealth and influence bore comparison to J. P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie.”
The Wicked Wager by Anya Wylde
“The infamous rake, Lord Richard Hamilton, has finally chosen his bride—the very appropriate Miss Emma Grey.
The ton approves, Lord Grey is pleased, Lady Grey delighted, and Emma is over the moon, but her uncle, (the blasted) Duke of Arden opposes the match, and Emma is ordered to move to the duke’s estate to think things over.”
I mean, seriously, what was I supposed to do? Turn those books down? I did ignore about 3/4 of the list but these were all so me that I just couldn’t.
Excuse me while I go bury myself in my pile of amazing books.
**Bad Ass Librarians of Timbuktu is ready for me to pick up at the library….
Wow, look at all those amazing books! I work at a library so I seldom buy books either, but I went to my parents’ library this weekend and bought three things from the sale cart, which I just had to mention on the blog today. 🙂 Yay for good bookish deals!
I am reading Padma Lakshmi’ s book right now. It’s pretty good but I get hungry while I’m reading it! Enjoy!