As the title says – I’ve bought some new books today. Buying books always makes me happy, so I felt inspired to write a random post about them. Since I read The Golem and the Djinni few days ago, I’ve only been reading a book for my Swedish classes. I study Swedish in a school for foreign languages and it’s my third year there so I’m quite proud that I’m able to read an entire book in Swedish. And this is our second one! 🙂
Anyway, I wanted to buy something to read so, without any high expectations, I went to a bookstore. The first book I got is The Uninvited by Liz Hensen. I actually noticed Anna Dressed in Blood by Kandale Blake first and was almost certain I would buy it, even though the paranormal romances aren’t really “my cup of tea”. I somehow thought it might be interesting, but I wasn’t sure. (If anyone’s read it, I would really like to know what you thought of it.) And then – this book stole my attention. On the cover, it’s compared to Kazuo Ishiguro, and I loved Never Let Me Go, so I decided to give it a go.
The Uninvited is supposed to be a “part psychological thriller, part dystopian nightmare”, creepy and thought-provoking. And I hope it will be, because covers sometimes lie.
“A seven-year-old girl puts a nail gun to her grandmother’s neck and fires.
An isolated incident, say the experts. The experts are wrong.”
As I said in one of my previous posts, I like a bit weird, even disturbing fiction, so you can see why I had to grab this book.
The other book I bought is The Collected Illustrated Works of Hans Christian Andersen. I wanted something like this for a while, and I found this nice, inexpensive edition. I already have the collected works of Edgar Allan Poe from the same collection and I’ve seen several others, but this is the first time I’ve come across this one. I don’t actually like these but, chunky books because it’s quite hard to hold them and read, but sometimes they are a great solution, especially when it comes to short stories. The book also looks pretty, and it’s a great collection, I can’t even count all the fairy tales which can be found in it. The Illustrations are black and white, and a bit dark, but they somehow suit the tone of Andersen’s tales as they some of them are quite bleak. I’m just so happy to have this edition in my possession! 🙂
 
This is basically how I buy books. First I try to find the books I’ve heard of and want to read. Sadly, where I live the choice of books is quite limited so I usually don’t find any of those. And only one bookstore has books in English, and I don’t like reading translations if I can read the original. So, if I really want to read something, I order it online. Therefore, I usually just look around, and if I have the time I do it for a very tong time. I admit, I completely lose sense of time when I browse through bookstores and that can sometimes be annoying to people who happen to be with me. But, what can I say, everyone has their own little obsessions. 😉 I wish I had more choice, because to me online orders are simply not the same as shopping at a bookstore. I don’t know why, but I like spending time there – alone, or with someone equally enthusiastic to discuss books and possible buys.
In the end, here are my two lovelies, from the same collection. I might add another one to my bookshelf, sometime in future.
BOOKS AND HOT TEA 