Posts Tagged books

Books for sale – do we have them? Yes, we do!

Now, here at BookieMonster we don’t promise to sell you 4 billion, squillion, million book titles – who has the money or time for that carry-on anyhoo?

What WE do is sell you interesting, individual and hand-selected (by moi, yes, moi) books. Books that will have you accosting strangers at parties and giving them a full run-down on the history of hardware and hardware stores (for example, and yes we do have that book).

Here’s my selection of some of our more unusual titles that we’re currently selling:

Did Monkeys Invent the Monkey Wrench?Did Monkeys Invent the Monkey Wrench by Vince Staten – a history of hardware and hardware stores. Hardware turns out to be surprisingly fascinating! Seriously!

Where God Was Born by Bruce Feiler - part travelogue, part religious study, part history lesson. Bruce Feiler travels through biblical sites around the Middle East.

The Sexual Life of Catherine M. by Catherine Millet - very French, Millet became something of a sensation after the publication of this graphic sexual memoir. Millet recounts her many experiences and interposes them with a dollop of philosophical thought regarding relationships and personal sexuality – reminiscent of both Jean Genet and Henry Miller.

Dog PartiesDog Parties: Entertaining Your Party Animals – People LOVE their dogs. I can understand this. And yes throwing them a party might seem like frou-frou – but these look like fun on a stick. Go with that anthropomorphization.

The Complete Guide to Uninvited Advice on Raising Children - you know the sort of thing: “Oh, we were teaching Bryannahxyz the basics of Swahili using flash cards the minute we got home from the hospital – you have to keep their brains busy at that age.” As the subtitle says: Everything you never wanted to know about raising children that people will tell you anyway.

Classic Literary Trivia - Never be stuck for an answer at that (admittedly very highbrow) pub quiz.

These are all titles from our selection of brand new books for sale!

We also have plenty of secondhand titles for you – I like to combine secondhand and new books because it caters for not only all budgets, but also for those booklovers who are looking for more classic books, or books no longer in print.

In that vein, here’s a selection of secondhand classic and older books for sale (and some New Zealand ones too!):

Lauris Edmond : Bonfires in the Rain – a memoir from one of New Zealand’s best writers and a sharp insight into New Zealand women’s lives in the mid-20th century. We also have…

Lauris Edmond : The Quick Word - the third volume in her trilogy of memoirs.

Memoirs of a Peon by Frank Sargeson – another New Zealand writer, one of Sargeson’s earliest novels.

The Penguin Dorothy Parker - Dorothy Parker is funny, crazy and an amazing short-story writer. She was also very very cruel to A.A. Milne, and therefore I like her a lot (sorry Piglet).

And then there’s just the unexplainable:

Stuff on My catStuff On My Cat : The Book - so there’s these cats, and they put stuff on them and then they took photos. Like lolcats. With extra stuff.

Jonathan Routh’s Good Loo Guide (to London) 1968 - Exactly what it says – a guide to London toilets. Seriously, toilets. A guide. To toilets. In London. Essential reading, if you ask me.

As always this is just a very small selection of the books we have for sale. Have a browse through all our listings, and don’t forget my Recommended Reads!

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BBAW Reading Meme

BBAW_Celebrate_BooksI thought I’d participate in the BBAW Reading Meme! See more at http://bookbloggerappreciationweek.com/

Do you snack while you read?
No

Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of
writing in books horrify you?

I used to write in books at university when I was reading purely for study purposes. Otherwise I don’t like the idea of writing in books at all.

How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book flat open?
My fantastic memory.

Fiction, Non-fiction, or both?
Both

Hard copy or audiobooks?
Hard copy

Are you a person who tends to read to the end of chapters, or are you able to put a book down at any point?
Generally I put it down at the point where I realise I’ve just been asleep for the last few seconds. Unfortunately my only spare time for reading at the moment is the very last 1/2 hour of the day.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop to look it up right away?
No, unfamiliar words tend to be easy to decipher by context. Luckily for me I don’t come across many unfamiliar words.

What are you currently reading?
Small Gods by Terry Pratchet

What is the last book you bought?
Personally (i.e. not for the business!) The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

Are you the type of person that only reads one book at a time or can you read more than one at a time?
Nowadays I mostly stick to one at a time, though I used to read several at a time.

Do you have a favorite time of day and/or place to read? 
Anytime, but it’s more about “Yay I have time to read” rather than waiting for my favourite time!

Is there a specific book or author that you find yourself recommending over and over?
If you’re reading this blog you’ll probably know the answer to this question!

How do you organize your books? (By genre, title, author’s last name, etc.?)
“Organize”…organize….? Nope, no idea what that means. :D

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Congratulations to all the 2009 Montana Book Awards Winners!

And especially to Emily Perkins who won the Montana Medal for Novel About My Wife. 

The 2009 Montana Book Awards winners were announced last night at a gala dinner in Auckland. Deserved winners all!

TVNZ’s news story has the list of winners here.

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What’s BookieMonster reading? The Messenger by Marcus Zusak

This is a slightly late “What’s BookieMonster currently reading?” post, so I’ll be honest and say I’ve actually just finished reading this book, however it’s just TOO good not to write about.

The book is The Messenger by Marcus Zusak, also know in the United States as I Am the Messenger. I’ll start by saying I was a huge fan of Zusak’s more prominent recent work The Book Thief – if you haven’t read it, no excuses, you simply must!

The Messenger is a very different book in location to The Book Thief, but is not a lesser book by any means. Set in a fringe town of Sydney, Australia, the book centres around Ed Kennedy, a 19 year old taxi driver who spends his days and nights driving taxis and playing cards with his friends Marv, Ritchie and Audrey (the classic subject of Ed’s unrequited love). Ed seems just an average young man, living a decidedly average life, until he receives a message – a coded message written on a playing card (the Ace of Diamonds to be exact) – that shows that Ed is very definitely not average.

I won’t ruin too much of the story because in many ways this book is a mystery – not just who is sending Ed the messages and why, but why does Ed become so intent on decoding the messages and following the seeming “whims” of the sender.

There are several themes at play in this book, the nature of love, the messiness and occasional random cruelty as well as the joy of family but to me the over-riding theme seemed to be that very ordinary people can do ordinary things that in small ways create something very extraordinary indeed, given the right circumstances.

Like The Book Thief, The Messenger is classed as Young Adult, but I would in no way fit it in to a neat, tidy, limiting box. It’s a very special book, and I think readers of all ages will find it speaks to them in quiet and powerful ways. Read it – you will not be disappointed.

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Spoiler Alert! BookieMonster likes to ***SPOILER***

I have a terrible, terrible confession to make. My name is BookieMonster and I read the end of books first. I love spoilers.

Yes, it’s true. I am an inveterate spoiler of books, movies, TV shows, you name it. I’ll read about 20 – 50 pages of a book, just enough to get the jist of the plot and/or mystery  and then I’ll flip to the end and read the climax. I look movies up on IMDB and read the spoilers, and I listen to Slate’s Spoiler Specials podcast before seeing the movie. I google TV shows and read the recaps on Televisionwithoutpity before I watch them. Sometimes I don’t even bother watching them after that. The recap is enough.

I just can’t help it. I don’t like surprises, and I don’t like distractions. Particularly with books I find that not knowing what’s happening and focusing on the plot machinations is a distraction to reading and enjoying the book. I know, I know, it’s an awful habit and I ought to be rather ashamed – and I am, but I’m not going to stop.

This is probably the main reason why I’m not a huge fan of mystery or thriller genre novels. When you’re so busy trying to figure out what’s going on and whodunnit it’s easier to ignore bad or mediocre writing and make the plot king, and unfortunately thriller and mystery writing have their fair share of mediocre writing. Or perhaps it’s just my literary snobbiness coming through. I think the former, or course. :D

 

P.S. While I’m getting things off my chest I also have to admit I don’t like Harry Potter and I could never make it further an about 1/4 of the way through Lord of the Rings. Sorry.

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