Holiday Book Haul

Lee-Ann and I just returned from a week and a half in Seattle and Portland. We started in Seattle, which is just a couple of hours on a ferry for us, and spent the weekend attending Pax West, a huge video game conference. We met up with some friends we haven’t seen in ages, and it was a great weekend.

Afterwards we took the train to Portland. We wanted to see the city, but I’d be lying if I said Powell’s Books wasn’t a big draw. We had a fantastic week, full of good food and city wandering, and we bought an awful lot of books.

I’ll go more into the trip in the month’s wrap-up, but for now the books:

• The Death of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave
• I Was the Cat by Paul Tobin
• Kaijumax, Season 1 by Zander Cannon
• The Sixth Gun, Vol. 1: Cold Dead Fingers by Cullen Bunn

This first picture is what I bought in Seattle. The guy working the Oni Press booth at Pax was great and walked us through what they had to offer. I loved the premise of I Was the Cat, and I’ve heard a lot of good things about The Sixth Gun, so those were easy choices. I asked him what comic he’d buy if he could only read one, and he recommended Kaijumax because it’s so unique and hilarious.

I have never read a Nick Cave novel, and I haven’t really heard much about them, but I like the lyrics in his music, so that’s a start. I picked up The Death of Bunny Munro at Left Bank Books Collective, which is a book store near Pike Place Market with a really cool and unusual selection.

• Something to Remember You By by Gene Wilder
• Fool’s Quest by Robin Hobb
• Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman
• Authority by Jeff VanderMeer
• The Vegetarian by Han Kang
• The Bookman’s Tale by Charlie Lovett
• If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
• French Milk by Lucy Knisley
• Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays by George Orwell
• On Writing by Charles Bukowski
• Ballistics: Poems by Billy Collins
• Laughter in the Dark by Vladimir Nabokov
• The Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi
• How to Read Literature by Terry Eagleton
• Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose
• Exploration Fawcett: Journey to the Lost City of Z by Percy Harrison Fawcett
• Saga, Volume 6 by Brian K. Vaughan

All of this, I bought at Powell’s Books in Portland. What a great store! It’s the size of a city block, with multiple floors and different rooms for different genres, new and used books interspersed, and there’s even a cafe where you can thumb through your unpurchased items before heading to the cashier. We decided, instead of doing one huge afternoon there, we would drop in for a short visit daily, as it’s open until 11:00pm and easy to fit in. This made for a fun week of book shopping, but it was a bit hard on the wallet and luggage.

My excuse is that I had a gift certificate. Not for the amount you see above, but you know, it contributed.