I've been pretty proud of myself; I've cut way back on book spending the last couple of months and haven't felt it at all.  Partly because of the TBR That Ate Melbourne, but also my discovery of Melbourne's underground charity used book sales and my local library.

But these were books I had to have for my own shelves and unlikely to find down under.

I found out a few months ago, much to my extreme amazement, that the city I was born in has its own school of architecture - wikipedia recognized and everything!  ;-)  My sister-in-law is an architect in Brisbane, which is almost as tropical as Florida, and shares a design aesthetic.  I bought Sarasota Modern by Andrew Weaving for her birthday last month, and when it arrived, I had to have my own copy.

Keeping with the Florida theme, I had to pick up Best. State. Ever.: A Florida Man Defends His Homeland by Dave Barry because somehow in the last decade or so my home state seems to have become that state.  I wanted a reminder of the delightful quirky, instead of the batshit quirky.

A Passion for Books by Harold Rabinowitz and Rob Kaplan is a book I discovered at the library and loved so much I had to have a copy for my own library.  If you love books as physical objects as well as love reading, I recommend checking this one out.

Happy weekend everyone.  :)

The Subtitle for this book is:

A Book Lover's Treasury of Stories, Essays, Humor, Lore, and Lists on Collecting, Reading, Borrowing, Lending, Caring for, and Appreciating Books.

which is pretty much the most accurate synopsis of the book possible.  It's an excellent collection of bits: cartoons, lists, quotes, poems and essays that range in length from one page to twenty.  I think there's even a curse upon those who steal books in here somewhere.

Everything included revolves around the simple love (or obsession) for books, as objects more than the stories they contain.  That's not to say the joy of reading isn't part of the whole, but this collection focuses on the joy, the need, of owning the books themselves.  Readers who've gone wholly digital, or prefer a minimalist housekeeping approach won't find much to love here.

As with any collection of writings from various authors and times, some are better than others, but there were very few I just didn't care for and then only because I either found the writing too dense or dated or the subject matter not quite interesting enough to enthral me.  There were maybe three all up that I wouldn't have missed if they were left out.  Given the table of contents runs to two and a half pages, that's a pretty good ratio.

The authors also include a 6 page bibliography at the end of other books about books, with the ones they used to create A Passion for Books marked with an asterisk.

This was a library loan for me, but I've already ordered a copy in hardcover for my personal library.  I'll enjoy dipping in and out of it again and again.

The postman got a break from me this week, but one of my locals and my library, did not.

Between my library system getting a few upgrades and my taking the time to dig around their website a bit more, I'm figuring out how to get more out of it than I have up until now. They have a user list function, so I've been creating a list of books as I come across interesting titles.  As you can see, it's working well so far.

My library haul includes Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde.  This is going to be my Science Fiction read for Summer Book Bingo.  I dislike dystopian settings, but I dislike space and AI fiction more - and I love Fforde's other work so I'm totally willing to give this a go for the humour alone.

I also picked up a couple of titles I found in an article on LitHub that recommended books about books: A Passion for Books: A Book Lover's Treasury of Stories by Harold Rabinowitz and Rob Kaplan  and The Book of Lost Books by Stuart Kelly.  Sitting next to The Book of Lost Books was Book by John Agard, which looked cute and short.

The library haul was rounded off with Picnic in Provence by Elizabeth Bard  and Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology by Leah Remini and Rebecca Paley  because I've seen so many good things said about both here on BookLikes.

Two of the three bookshop buys were impulses from shelf browsing; I had just read about The World Between Two Covers: Reading the Globe by Kelli Ann Morgan  mere hours before seeing it on the shelves, so that felt like karma.  The Clasp by Sloane Crosley looks funny and I've read her essays - they're hysterical.  The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman  because it's birds, science and look at that cover!

Total new books: 9

Total books read this week: 9

Total physical books on TBR: 227

I hope everyone has had or is having (depending on which side of the dateline you're on) a fabulous weekend!