Book Haul and Update

Today I left the house with a stack of books and authors who I wanted to check out at the local secondhand bookshop - I can't afford to buy lots of new books, nor jusify it with a 500+ unread TBR pile - but the bookshop was shut! :( I wasn't too happy, but as I live in one of those trendy little coffee shop villages there are a lot of charity shops and generally their book selections are better than you'd find in the average town. I also had a stack of reservations to pick up from the library so I ended up with quite a haul.

From the library I got:
The Photographer by Emmanuel Guibert, Didier Lefevre and Frederic Lemercier - this book is a mix of real life photographs and graphic novel. Lefevre is a photographer who travelled to Afgahnistan during the war with doctors and nurses from the Doctor's Without Borders programme. It looks amazing but harrowing.
Epileptic by David B. another graphic novel which is an autobiography about growing up with an epileptic brother. Both of these were found on an amazon search and then reserved at the library.
Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata a Japanese book I know nothing about, except it's tiny, ordered because it is the International Reads goodreads group books for December.
Lolita by Vladamir Nabokov because in January the Bookish group, also on goodreads, are doing a joint reading of a memoir by Nabokov called Speak. Memory alongside Pale Fire, so I thought I would like to read his most famous work first.

From the chrity shop I brought the following for less than £12
Eve was Framed by Helena Kennedy - for my flatmate but I'm planning on reading it too, (although she doesn't know that yet)
America by Stephen Fry- I love Stephen Fry, I've met him several times too when he would shop in a quirky shop I worked in whilst at university, and I'm planning on reading more non-fiction next year.
A Rage to Live - John O'Hara - never heard of this or his other novels but this is a Vintage classic and I love that series.
Losing Battles by Eudora Welty - I saw this for 50p and knew she was a Southern author and I think their is a Southern reading month this January on Brooke's youtube channel/blog.
The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon- I actually went into this charity shop because last weekend they had The Amazing Adventure's of Kavalier and Klay (which I keep hearing great things about) but I didn't have any cash on me and the shop was about to close, unfortunately someone else had snapped it up but this was still there.
Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel - I read Wolf Hall and loved it, despite knowing nothing about history and getting a bit mixed up with the names. I've been meaning to buy this for ages.

This is a big book haul for my, normally I'm fairly conservative as there isn't any space left to store books in the house, I think it maybe a reaction to signing up for the final TBR Triple Dog Dare where I can only read from my shelves for three months from January 1st till April 1st.

I'm off to spend the next hour finishing The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, which I have a feeling is going to make me cry, this is a bookclub read for a brand new RL bookgroup, in a trendy delicatessans/coffee shop/location of many wine and cheese nights, live jazz nights, poetry reading nights etc. I'm really looking forward to the group meet, but will certainly be doing some research as I'm not sure what other type of people will be there - not sure my Literature degree and MA in Literature will hide my w/c accent in a room full of plumming accented, shiny-never-seen-a-speck-of-mud Land Rover driving stay-at-home Mums. But maybe I'm the one being the snob!

Oh, and I am now addicted to booktube. I blame Estella's Revenge, I watched one of her videos and it's now become an obsessesion. Some favourites are MercysBookishMusings, From the Shelf and chboskyy. I swear if I had used the video watching time this week to read I would have fininshed my next read It by Stephen King.