to being a book glutton.

Mostly this confession is to preface a rambling (?) extensive (!) list of my favorite finds this year.

I find myself buying in bulk (I’m nearly always buying from used-book stores, so at least this isn’t financial suicide) and who knows if that intriguing title will still be there the next time I come back….

Whenever I bring home books I write the month/year on the title page, so I always know the context and timing of the purchases.  This is meaningful to me for some reason.

I considered going to Amazon and linking all of these, but as this is one of those mostly for my own benefit posts, I figured I’d just have the list up for me, and if anything intrigues you enough, let me know and I”ll add the link for it.

And I suppose this could be a sort of bragging– about what my book-buying experience is like– but by the same token it could be to my shame as well; proving beyond doubt that there’s no way I can keep up with the number of books I’m buying.  Proving I should stop for a while. Even if I don’t.

• Stephen King’s On Writing, which I’ve mentioned before.
• Writing Alone and With Others
• A Critical Handbook of Children’s Literature (One I feel I should finish before I dive into my second book.  Already fascinating from the introduction.)
• A cornucopia of writing books that I haven’t been able to explore fully yet (one of the perils of multiple simultaneous purchases)
  • Beginnings, Middles and Ends
  • Happy as a Clam
  • Building Believable Characters
  • The Common Writer
  • The Observation Deck
  • The Faith of a Writer
  • Free to Write (“A Journalist teaches young writers”)
• Folktale collections (this is the year I got behind my buying, and can no longer say I’ve read everything on that shelf).  It is both a delight and a disappointment when I find these in a used-book store.  I am pleased to add them to my collection, of course, but I am sorry someone else felt them not-worth keeping.
  • Hearsay: Strange Tales from the Middle Kingdom
  • Japanese Fairy Tales (James)
  • Grimm’s Fairy Tales (Illustrated by Arthur Rackham)
  • The Dark Thirty (McKissack)
  • The Magic of Mythical Creatures (an illustrated exploration
  • Pegasus (glorious illustrations!)
  • The Carpet of Solomon
  • Solomon and the Ant
  • The Little Match Girl (another well-illustrated tale)
  • Peter and the Troll Baby
  • Irish Folktales (from the Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library.  One of the best “libraries” I have yet had the pleasure to find.  Their name is on a whole survey of different countries and I haven’t found a dud yet– maybe half-a-dozen books, so far?)
  • Thistle and Thyme (*Excellent*EXCELLENT* collection if anyone looks for it, you want the version from 1965 or later– it includes under the same title the stories from both her works.)
  • Outfoxing Fear (Collected by the same anthologist who gave us the equally intriguing Fearless Girls, Wise Women & Beloved Sisters)
  • Celebrate! Stories of the Jewish Holodays
  • A Short History of Myth
  • Balinese Children’s Favorite Stories
  • Short and Shivery
  • A book of Wizards
  • The Book of Dragons
  • Tatterhood
  • Tales from Silver Lands
  • Fairy Tales from Many Lands (notible only because it is illustrated by Arthur Rackham.  Language is quite archaic and stilted.)
• Parenting books, I should’ve expected, there were also in abundance
  • Homeschooling: the Early Years
  • Don’t make Me Count to Three
  • Teaching Your Child how to Pray
  • Opening Your Child’s Spiritual Windows
  • A Survivor’s guide to homeschooling (This was a hoot, as the introduction included a list of 13 things that if the reader was doing 7 or more with any regularity she didn’t need this book)
• Then the useful living and idea books
  • Holiness for Housewives– and other working women
  • Simple Steps
  • The Real Woman’s Personal Trainer (yes, I do everything from books– even exercise.)

And there were even more, but these are the ones that still are in my mind at the end of the year (that I’m willing to share).

My bookshelves are nearly full now, and my little house won’t hold much more without extensive and focused rearranging; so whatever else happens my buying pattern will have to change.  I just don’t know yet what that change will look like.