Book Haul: Black Friday/Cyber Monday

If you've been following my blog for the duration of this year, then you'll probably remember that I tried to give up my intensive book buying by borrowing from the library more. The library has definitely helped to quench my book buying thirst, though I still do buy books (just not in large quantities all at once).

However, with Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales, I couldn't resist but use all the coupon codes available to me.

I try to make "smart" purchases which, in reference to books, are either:

1. books I know I'll want to reread eventually

2. most adored/favorite books (and since they are of that nature, I'll obviously want to reread them)

3. limited edition versions of books

4. books I may want to pass on to future children ;)

5. collector's purposes



Anyway, I have ranted long enough.
Here are the book purchases I've made in the last couple weeks.
I added short descriptions for each book (courtesy of Goodreads) that I cut down to be more spoiler-free.

The only thing better than a pile of books is having those books arranged so you can gawk at all the lovely covers.

Below, I did my usual thing: links, book descriptions, reasons for why I purchased these specific titles.

Top Row [L-R]: Fortunately the Milk, Lolita, Raise High the Roof Beam
Bottom Row [L-R]: Sula, I Robot, A Separate Peace, The Eye of Minds

I, Robot - Isaac Asimov

• links: Amazon | Goodreads
• reason for purchase:
• I'm always on the lookout for great sci-fi. I saw this on a list of must-read sci-fi books a while back and marked it on my list. 
• book description:
•  In I, Robot, Asimov chronicles the development of the robot through a series of interlinked stories: from its primitive origins in the present to its ultimate perfection in the not-so-distant future--a future in which humanity itself may be rendered obsolete.

Fortunately, the Milk - Neil Gaiman

• links: Amazon | Goodreads
• reason for purchase:
•  When I heard Neil Gaiman read a part of this book aloud on his US tour, I knew I had to have it.
• book description:
• Find out just how odd things get in this hilarious story of time travel and breakfast cereal, expertly told by Newbery Medalist and bestselling author Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Skottie Young.

The Eye of Minds - James Dashner

• links: Amazon | Goodreads
• reason for purchase
• I just started reading The Maze Runner and am enjoying it immensely so far. I saw that this was his newest series and decided I'd give it a try as well. 
• book description:
• The Eye of Minds is the first book in The Mortality Doctrine, a series set in a world of hyperadvanced technology, cyberterrorists, and gaming beyond your wildest dreams . . . and your worst nightmares.

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

• links: Amazon | Goodreads
• reason for purchase:
•  It's a controversial classic. Need I say more?
• book description:
• Awe and exhilaration—along with heartbreak and mordant wit—abound in Lolita, Nabokov's most famous and controversial novel, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America. Most of all, it is a meditation on love—love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.

Sula - Toni Morrison

• links: Amazon | Goodreads
• reason for purchase:
• The only reason I need: it's written by Toni Morrison. 
• book description:
• In clear, dark, resonant language, Toni Morrison brilliantly evokes not only a bond between two lives, but the harsh, loveless, ultimately mad world in which that bond is destroyed, the world of the Bottom and its people, through forty years, up to the time of their bewildered realization that even more than they feared Sula, their pariah, they needed her.

A Separate Peace - John Knowles

• links: Amazon | Goodreads
• reason for purchase:
• I believe this book was mentioned often in The Thing About Luck (Kadohata). Her book made me very curious about this one. 
• book description:
•  Set at a boys boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between the two friends one summer, like the war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and their world.

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction - J.D. Salinger

• links: Amazon | Goodreads
• reason for puchase:
• I'm a big J.D. Salinger fan, and this is the only published work of his that I have yet to read. 
• book description:
•  The author writes: The two long pieces in this book originally came out in The New Yorker ? RAISE HIGH THE ROOF BEAM, CARPENTERS in 1955, SEYMOUR ? An Introduction in 1959. Whatever their differences in mood or effect, they are both very much concerned with Seymour Glass, who is the main character in my still-uncompleted series about the Glass family.

I miss doing book hauls. Unfortunately, life demands that I spend less money on books and more money saving up for things like student loans, phone bills, housing, etc.

I hoped you enjoyed this.
Since my "What to Expect" post, I've come up with more things I want to do, so there may be more posts soon to come. ;)