Book Haul: 2017

I have vowed not to buy any books whatsoever in 2017, choosing instead to read everything on my to-read shelves, and all of those tomes which I optimistically downloaded onto my Kindle a couple of years ago and have yet to get to.  Of course, if I do manage to finish everything, I will begin to replenish my shelves, but it looks highly unlikely at this juncture.

With that said, there are many books which I bought or received at the end of 2017 which I have yet to include in a haul post such as this.  Without further ado, I shall therefore detail every book which has come into my possession since my last haul post.

I shall begin with my new Kindle books.  I saw a very favourable review of Lionel Shriver‘s The Standing Chandelier: A Novella on Goodreads, and ended up buying myself a copy for around £1; I’m very glad I did, as the idea is both original and inventive, and I certainly enjoyed the reading experience.  I took advantage of one of the daily deals, and got myself a copy of A Manual for Cleaning Women, a short story collection by Lucia Berlin which I have had my eye on for ages.

On Instagram, a fellow reader whom I follow had hauled a copy of Otto Prenzler‘s The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries, which they found in The Works for just £4.  Whilst I was unable to find a copy in store, I ordered it and picked it up the next day, along with a copy of Ghost: 100 Stories to Read with the Lights On, which is edited by Louise Welsh.  I also couldn’t resist ordering a copy of The Morlo by L.A. Knight, a travelogue about seals, which I randomly came across on a vintage bookshop on Etsy.

I took a trip to a local charity shop which sells four books for 99p, and chose a few to add to my to-read shelf at University.  I ended up getting 12 Days by Shelly Silas, which was a collection of rather mediocre Christmas stories; Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernieres in a lovely hardback edition, which I will be reading during my Around the World in 80 Books challenge this year; A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, which I enjoyed, but not as much as most others seem to have; the very enjoyable, and very quick to read, The Girls by Emma Cline; and The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios by Yann Martel.

Another travel guide also made its way onto my to-read list.  My boyfriend and I have booked a holiday to Canada at the end of January, and so it was exciting to order a copy of Lonely Planet Canada.  They are definitely my favourite range of travel guides, and I’m very excited to dip in and see what Toronto has to offer.

Of course, I received some wonderful Christmas books this year, three of which were signed, which was very exciting.  My parents got me copies of Pablo Picasso’s Noel, Carol Ann Duffy‘s festive poem for 2017; Turtles All the Way Down by John Green; Winter by Ali Smith; Here Is New York by E.B. White; and I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O’Farrell.  I have already read and loved all of these.  Those which I have outstanding are Mythos by the wonderful Stephen Fry, and a random choice from one of my dearest friends, The Seven Noses of Soho by Jamie Manners, as she knows how much I am currently missing London.

I made the decision to order the 34 books which I needed for my Around the World in 80 Books challenge from AbeBooks.  I have scoured my Kindle and bookshelves for tomes which I could include, but there were many which I did not personally own, and which I was unable to find in either of my local library systems.  I ordered so many books, in fact, that the poor postman had to deliver them using a crate.  Whilst this enormous order sounds very greedy, I thought that ordering all of the books which I needed during 2017 would help me stick to my book-buying ban (fingers crossed!).  I shall detail them, along with the countries which they will be included for, in a bullet pointed list below, as this seemed the easiest way to organise such a big list of books!

• Mrs Hemingway by Naomi Wood (Cuba)
• The Informers by Juan Gabriel Vasquez (Colombia)
• Broken April by Ismail Kadare (Albania)
• The Sojourn by Andre Krivak (Slovakia)
• Kaddish for an Unborn Child by Imre Kertesz (Hungary)
• The Quiet American by Graham Greene (Vietnam)
• The Bondmaid by Catherine Lim (China)
• Resistance by Anita Shreve (Belgium)
• Bitter Lemons by Lawrence Durrell (Cyprus)
• First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung (Cambodia)
• The Night Buffalo by Guillermo Arriago (Mexico)
• Train to Trieste by Domnica Radulescu (Romania)
• Solo by Rana Dasgupta (Bulgaria)
• Mosquito by Roma Tearne (Sri Lanka)
• Blood-Drenched Beard by Daniel Galera (Brazil)
• The Silence and the Roar by Nihad Sirees (Syria)
• The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas (Norway)
• The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann (Switzerland)
• Ways of Going Home by Alejandro Zambra (Chile)
• Kamchatka by Marcelo Figueras (Argentina)
• Death of a Prima Donna by Brina Svit (Slovenia)
• The Colour by Rose Tremain (New Zealand)
• The Diviners by Margaret Laurence (Canada)
• A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov (Georgia)
• The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andric (Bosnia-Herzegovina)
• Lies by Enrique de Heriz (Guatemala)
• The Hired Man by Aminatta Forna (Croatia)
• Ours are the Streets by Sunjeev Sahota (Pakistan)
• Burmese Days by George Orwell (Myanmar)
• The Beach by Alex Garland (Thailand)
• The Hacienda by Lisa St. Aubin de Teran (Venezuela)
• Landfalls by Naomi J. Williams (Pacific Islands)
• Ali and Nino by Kurban Said (Azerbaijan)
• Eight Months on Ghazzah Street by Hilary Mantel (Saudi Arabia)

 

Have you read any of these?  Which were the last books that you bought?

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