You know how this works: the local library holds a massive book sale, I come away with a whole mess of books, and then I blog about them. And you comment on them. Let’s go.

1: Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw
Owing to my long-standing fascination with Joan of Arc and Fariba’s excellent review of the play, I decided to pick this one up.
2: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
This is one of those books that I’ve been meaning to read for ages. The inside cover was scribbled on a little by its previous owner, but for 50¢, I really can’t complain.
3: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard
A perfect follow-up to Hamlet, don’t you think?
4: The Oxford Book of English Verse
Suzannah Rowntree at Vintage Novels highly recommended this book so when I saw a not-too-beat-up copy of it on the “Poetry” table, I was excited. I was even more excited when I got home and found out that this particular version, edited by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, is out of print and extremely rare. For $2, I’d say that’s a steal. 😀
5: Fear and Trembling by Søren Kierkegaard
I picked up this one per Fariba’s recommendation as well. Having never read Kierkegaard, this looks like just the place to start.

6: Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
While trying to find out what is meant by a “Faustian deal,” I ended up reading about this play. I’ve been wanting to read some non-Shakespearean Elizabethan drama for a while and this seemed like the ticket.
7: Selected Poems by Robert Browning
I read “My Last Duchess” in high school and there ends my knowledge of Browning’s work. Let’s see how this goes!
8: Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
I like to read the authors that made my favorite authors who they were. Wolfe is one such author, having been cited as a major influence by Ray Bradbury.

9: Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Blame Karen Swallow Prior for this one: her enthusiastic praise of Madame Bovary made me curious.
10: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer
Widely considered the definitive history of Nazi Germany. I got all 1,245 pages of it for a dollar.
11: A Historical Atlas of Judaism by Ian Barnes and Josephine Bacon
This one might be a dud, I’m afraid. Since bringing the book home, I’ve read some reviews of it that claim it’s inaccurate in places. Good thing I only spent a few dollars on it. 🙂
12: The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
This too might be a biased waste of money, but at $2, I couldn’t pass it up. If nothing else, it would make an admirable doorstop. 😉
While not technically a book, I also bought a 2008 copy of Life magazine about Audrey Hepburn.
Has anyone out there read any of these? What did you think? Any you would like to read? Let me know in the comments.