Official TBR count - January 31, 2007

At the end of January, my TBR pile is at:

--- 215 ---

Another new book!

Today I received Dragonne's Eg by Mary Brown in the mail.

New books!

I received these books on Thursday:

Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood by Oliver Sacks
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

2 more books!

Two more books came in so far this week:

Upside Down by John Ramsey Miller
Tinker by Wen Spencer

More new books!

Here are the new books I received recently:

Unicorn Mountain by Michael Bishop
An Audience of Chairs by Joan Clark
Practical Demonkeeping by Christopher Moore
Reliquary by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
The Parsifal Mosaic by Robert Ludlum
The Good, the Bad, and the Undead by Kim Harrison
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Another new book!

Today I received The Amulet of Samarkand (Bartimaeus Trilogy, Book 1) by Jonathan Stroud!

Description:

"Presenting a thrilling new voice in children's literature-a witty, gripping adventure story featuring a boy and his not-so-tame djinni. Nathaniel is a young magician's apprentice, taking his first lessons in the arts of magic. But when a devious hotshot wizard named Simon Lovelace ruthlessly humiliates Nathaniel in front of everyone he knows, Nathaniel decides to kick up his education a few notches and show Lovelace who's boss. With revenge on his mind, he masters one of the toughest spells of all: summoning the all-powerful djinni, Bartimaeus. But summoning Bartimaeus and controlling him are two different things entirely, and when Nathaniel sends the djinni out to steal the powerful Amulet of Samarkand, Nathaniel finds himself caught up in a whirlwind of magical espionage, murder, blackmail, and revolt. Set in a modern-day London spiced with magicians and mayhem, this extraordinary, funny, pitch-perfect thriller will dazzle the myriad fans of Artemis Fowl and the His Dark Materials trilogy. And with the rights sold in more than a dozen countries, and a major motion picture in the works, the Bartimaeus trilogy is on the fast track to becoming a classic."

Another new book!

Yesterday I received another bookring book in the mail - Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden. I'll probably start reading it sometime next week.

Two new books!

I received two more books yesterday:

Shakespeare's Landlord by Charlaine Harris. This is the first book in the Lily Bard mystery series. It is also a bookring book, so when I finish it, I'll mail it to the next person in the ring.

Hemlock Bay by Catherine Coulter. This is the sixth book in the FBI mystery series.

New book today

Today I got 1776 by David McCullough!

Description:

" In this stirring book, David McCullough tells the intensely human story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence -- when the whole American cause was riding on their success, without which all hope for independence would have been dashed and the noble ideals of the Declaration would have amounted to little more than words on paper.

Based on extensive research in both American and British archives, 1776 is a powerful drama written with extraordinary narrative vitality. It is the story of Americans in the ranks, men of every shape, size, and color, farmers, schoolteachers, shoemakers, no-accounts, and mere boys turned soldiers. And it is the story of the King's men, the British commander, William Howe, and his highly disciplined redcoats who looked on their rebel foes with contempt and fought with a valor too little known.

Here also is the Revolution as experienced by American Loyalists, Hessian mercenaries, politicians, preachers, traitors, spies, men and women of all kinds caught in the paths of war.

At the center of the drama, with Washington, are two young American patriots, who, at first, knew no more of war than what they had read in books -- Nathanael Greene, a Quaker who was made a general at thirty-three, and Henry Knox, a twenty-five-year-old bookseller who had the preposterous idea of hauling the guns of Fort Ticonderoga overland to Boston in the dead of winter.

But it is the American commander-in-chief who stands foremost -- Washington, who had never before led an army in battle.

The book begins in London on October 26, 1775, when His Majesty King George III went before Parliament to declare America in rebellion and to affirm his resolve to crush it. From there the story moves to the Siege of Boston and its astonishing outcome, then to New York, where British ships and British troops appear in numbers never imagined and the newly proclaimed Continental Army confronts the enemy for the first time. David McCullough's vivid rendering of the Battle of Brooklyn and the daring American escape that followed is a part of the book few readers will ever forget.

As the crucial weeks pass, defeat follows defeat, and in the long retreat across New Jersey, all hope seems gone, until Washington launches the "brilliant stroke" that will change history.

The darkest hours of that tumultuous year were as dark as any Americans have known. Especially in our own tumultuous time, 1776 is powerful testimony to how much is owed to a rare few in that brave founding epoch, and what a miracle it was that things turned out as they did.

Written as a companion work to his celebrated biography of John Adams, David McCullough's 1776 is another landmark in the literature of American history."

New books!

After three days of no mail (Sunday, New Year's, President Ford's Funeral), I came home to find four packages in the mailbox. Three were wishlist books, and one was part of a bookring. A bookring is a Bookcrossing book that someone sends out and which eventually makes it back to the owner. So, my TBR mountain has increased by 3 total.

Here are the books:

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (bookring)
Thunderhead by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.
Engines of God by Jack McDevitt
Map of Bones by James Rollins