Book Haul!

Hey guys,

So, you know how the makeup people on Youtube do hauls featuring all the new makeup and junk that they've bought? Well, I thought I'd do one, but with books. I went out on a second-hand book store raid today because we have a chain here in Calgary of second-hand book stores called Fair's Fair. I got it in my head that I wanted to find all of the Murdoch Mystery books. At the Fair's Fair, I found none. But, I came away a few things.

The first thing I grabbed from FF was another copy of Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden. I have a copy of this already, but I used it for my IB Extended Essay so it's all highlighted and marked up, so I decided I wanted a second copy, unmarked, for pleasure reading since this is my favourite book of all time.

Next thing I picked up was a book called Beijing Coma. I randomly found this on the shelf, so I've done no previous research on the novel, but it looks really good. From the back cover I've learned that it's about a guy who was shot in Tiananmen Square and is now blind, mute and paralyzed, but he can still hear. This one should be quite good.

We then went to Chapters and I managed to find the Murdoch Mystery books, but only picked up the first one, Except the Dying, because each one was $21. I've started this one and it's pretty good so far. I'll be struggling with the images of the characters because all that's in my head is the images of the actors, not the images being described to me. I'm bad at dissociating the images I've seen from those that I read, that's why my style is so descriptive, because I see the stories like a movie in my head. Anyway, back to the point.

I got a couple other books a few days ago, but since they're relatively new I'll put them in this haul too. The first one which I'm a currently reading alongside Except the Dying is a book called Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff. I'll be honest, I picked this up only because it said "Shangri-La" on the cover and that happens to be the name of the latest Nazi Zombies map on Black Ops. However, this is a true story about a plane crash during WWII in which 3 survivors are, well, lost in Shangri-La. It's really well written and the story is actually really good, for non-fiction. I hope this is the kind of stuff I get to read in my non-fiction analysis class in the winter semester.

The last one I got was called The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht. The synopsis says it's about a young woman who's searching for clues to the only story that her grandfather never told her. Probably something about his past and the family's past. This one looks interesting, and the author is a very young woman and, being a young woman trying to get into the writing world myself, it would be beneficial to see what others in my position are putting out.

That concludes the haul, I'll probably end up talking more about these at some point as I get through reading them, so stay tuned for that. I think I'll do more book hauls in the future, that was kind of fun!

I hope you're all doing well!
~Alexandra