The “british pound is low” book haul

British pound hit a low recently and that means one thing: excuse to buy books from british amazon!

This book haul can be separated into these categories:

• The educational ones

Two of them were bought at a talk of Dan Ariely, not from amazon.

Dan Ariely is a professor in psychology and behavioral economics in Duke University.

I “met” him through his amazing coursera course (I don’t know if it is still available). By the way, if you don’t know coursera, check it out, it has free university courses on many topics. Recently they included many paid courses, but you can still audit them for free.

After his great talk, I bought these two books: Predictably irrational and Behavioural Economics Saved My Dog and I know they are surely of the most enjoying popular science books.

And from Amazon I ordered A Brief History of Manga, by Helen McCarthy. It is way smaller than I imagined, but whatever.

 

• The japanese ones

Japanese literature again! ❤

• From the Fatherland With Love, by Ryū Murakami: Ruy Murakami is famous for his books of horror (Audition – not horror for me-, In the Miso Soup) and sex (Almost Transparent Blue). This book is very very different: a dystopian present where Japan’s (and USA’s) economy has fallen, which leads to North Korea invading Japan. Interesting. But kind of waay bigger that I though

• The Nakano Thrift Shop, by Hiromi Kawakami: Last year I read Strange weather in Tokyo by the same author and with the same style of awesome cover. I loved that book! I had no idea what The Nakano Thrift Shop it is about, I just added it in my list immediately. Apparently the story is somewhat similar: it is about a girl that start working at a thrift shop that has a mysterious owner and they fall in love.

• The Book of Tokyo: a city in short fiction: a collection of stories by japanese authors (including Banana Yoshimoto and Hiromi Kawakami – look above) set in Tokyo. Short stories + Tokyo = ❤

 

• The pretty ones

They are so pretty 🙂

• Tokyo on foot, by Florent Chavouet: this was actually the excuse for this book haul. It is an awesome book full of drawings about Tokyo. Maps, houses, stores… it is AMAZING
• Edgar Alan Poe: Stories & Poems, illustrated by David Plunkert: this is my third Classics Reimagined book, after Pride and Prejudice and The Wizard Of Oz. We all know the stories. But these book have amazing illustrations!

 

• The rest

Many awesome books, most of them I found through So much reading and Eleni (Over the place)

• Black Wave, by Michelle Tea: Drug addict and romantically disastrous Michelle heads to LA when it is announced that the world will end. She starts dating Matt Dillon and writing a novel. It had me at “the world will end”.

• The Last One, by Alexandra Oliva: A reality TV show, where contestants are sent out in the woods to face difficult challenges. While they are out there, something terrible happens in the world. Cut off from society, they believe that everything difficult they encounter is part of the game. We follow Zoo as she tries to survive. Sounds interesting!

• The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, by Becky Chambers: everyone is going crazy about this book. They compare it to the TV series Firefly (its cancellation is every TV-nerd’s big complain). An intergalactic novel with crazy and interesting characters. To be honest, although I really like Firefly and Battlestar Galactica, “intergalactic” generally doesn’t sound very appealing to me. But the description of this book’s characters made it sound very interesting. And of course I want to see what the big fuss is all about.

• Hex, by Thomas Olde Heuvelt: I live in the Netherlands 5 years and I have read only a couple of dutch authors. I really want to change that. And when I saw that this awesome horror book was written by a dutch, I just had to buy it. The story sounds amazing and it is becoming a famous horror book. It is about a cursed city. The elders decided to quarantine the city with high-tech surveillance to avoid spreading the curse. But some teenagers decide to go viral with this. Interesting!
• Mischling, by Affinity Konar: A WWII story about twins in Auschwitz that get experimented by Mengele. Everything in this sentence is calling me to read this book.