Beware the Black Friday Book Sale!

WARNING!  You could be tempted to fill your e-reader with wonderful books if you read this post!

I have joined forces with Perry Elizabeth Kirkpatrick and dozens (maybe hundreds) of other clean fiction authors to bring you the best deal on our books of the year!  The Black Friday Book Sale starts today and runs through Cyber Monday.  There are more than 700 books on sale for 99 cents or less, and you can find them all at BlackFridayBookSale.com .  

As part of this sale, the Kindle editions of ALL of my full-length books will be only 99 cents each!

That means you could buy all six Once Upon a Western books, plus A Noble Companion, for less than the price of one of my paperbacks.  If you've been wanting to buy the three books I released this year, right now would be a smart time to do that!

I'll be shopping the sale myself this morning.  It's such a fun way to try new authors or fill in gaps in a collection.  I'm not quite finished with all the e-books I bought via last year's sale, in fact!  But that's okay, I definitely need to pick up a few more ;-)

The I'll Get Around to It Tag

I found this at The Christian Fiction Girl and thought it looked like good fun, especially as I eye my TBR stacks and shelves, and see how they just keep filling up no matter how assiduously I try to empty them.

The Rules 

• Link back to the original post @ Quote, Unquote. 
• Link back to the person who tagged you. 
• You may use the included graphic anywhere in your post (optional; a black clock with Roman numerals) 
• Answer all seven categories with a book. 
• Tag seven others. (optional)

The Categories

1. A classic book that you have been meaning to read forever but haven’t yet

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville.  I even bought myself a really pretty copy a couple years ago, but that still hasn't gotten me to actually read it.  Yet.

2. A book on your shelf that you haven’t read yet 

Um, I have more than 400 books on my shelves that I haven't read yet.  And you want me to pick one?  Well, I shall pick Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, which has been on my TBR shelves longer than two of my kids have been alive...

3. A book that you got recently that you haven’t read 

I just picked up a lovely copy of The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens at a thrift store recently.  Will read it someday.

4. A book that you’ve had forever but haven’t read 

I've had Under the Deodars by Rudyard Kipling on my shelves since before all three of my kids were born.  Still haven't read it.

5. A book a friend recommended that you haven’t read 

People tell me I will love The Story Girl by L. M. Montgomery, and I have a copy on my shelves for when I am in the right mood for some Montgomery!

6. A book you’re procrastinating on 

I keep telling myself to read Villette by Charlotte Bronte, but I am a little afraid to try it, to be honest.  I'm afraid I will compare it to Jane Eyre too much, and it can't possibly live up to that.  I know I can choose not to compare them intentionally, but I worry I will do it subconsciously.  One of these days, I'll read it!

7. The next book on your TBR

Break the Beast by Allison Tebo, a fantasy retelling of Beowulf!

Not tagging anyone with this today because I just don't feel like it.  Play if you want to!

The categories again, for your copying ease:

A classic book that you have been meaning to read forever but haven’t yet 

A book on your shelf that you haven’t read yet 

A book that you got recently that you haven’t read 

A book that you’ve had forever but haven’t read 

A book a friend recommended that you haven’t read 

A book you’re procrastinating on 

The next book on your TBR

The Black Friday Indie Book Sale!

This weekend, I have marked down the Kindle editions of all four of my Once Upon a Western novels to $0.99 for Black Friday, and that sale will last through Cyber Monday!  My e-book editions are usually $2.99-$3.99, so this means you could theoretically get all four of them for less than just one Kindle copy of My Rock and My Refuge.

Not only that, but my books are part of the massive annual Black Friday Indie Book Sale hosted by author Perry Kirkpatrick, which includes more than 500 ebooks all priced under a $1.  Check out her website to browse the complete list of books that are included in this sale, and start reading some great books this weekend!

Here are direct links to each of my Kindle books that are on sale on Amazon, just to make life easier for you:

Cloaked

Dancing and Doughnuts

One Bad Apple

My Rock and My Refuge

Happy reading!  And, happy Thanksgiving!

Top Ten Tuesday: Mine, all mine!

Have you ever borrowed a book from the library or a friend, or read an e-copy, and loved the book so much you just had to buy a physical copy for your shelves?

I definitely have done this!  If I love a book, that means I'll want to reread it, and that means I want a copy on my shelves so I can reread it at any moment.  

So, here are ten books and/or series I've done that with, for this week's Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl.  All titles are linked to my reviews :-)

(All pictures are mine from my Instagram account)

The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery (PG)

Corral Nocturne by Elisabeth Grace Foley (G)

Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster (G)

Girl in Disguise by Greer MacAllister (PG-13)

Laertes by Carly Stevens (PG-16)

The Light of Western Stars by Zane Grey (PG)

The Mycroft and Sherlock books by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse 

• Mycroft Holmes (PG-13)
• Mycroft and Sherlock (PG-13)
• Mycroft and Sherlock: The Empty Birdcage (PG-13)

The Reluctant Godfather by Allison Tebo (G)

The Two Blue Doors trilogy by Hillary Manton Lodge 

• A Table by the Window (PG)
• Reservations for Two (PG-13)
• Together at the Table (PG-13)

The Tudor Throne series by Charity Bishop

• The Usurper's Throne (PG-16)
• The Welsh Gambit (PG-13)
• The King's Players (PG-13)
• The Secret in the Tower (PG-16)
• The Queen's Falconer (PG-16)
• The Last Fire-Eater (PG-13)
• Isabella's Daughter (PG-13)

Have you read any of these?  Did you do a TTT this week?  Do share!

Top Ten Tuesday: New Acquisitions

This week's Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl is "Most Recent Additions to My Book Collection."  

I have been working hard at reading down my TBR shelves, using #TheUnreadShelfProject to help me keep motivated, so I have been trying not to buy quite so many books.  And I also didn't ask for many books for Christmas, for the same reason.  But I do still buy books here and there -- life of a bibliophile, right?  So, between a few purchases this month, Christmas gifts, and a few purchases last month, here are the ten books I have most recently acquired:

The Depths We'll Go To edited by Alex Silvius

The London House by Katherine Reay

The Lone Ranger and the Mystery Ranch by Fran Striker

The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope

Stoneheart Hunt by Abby D. Jones and Martin Brodde

Twice Freed by Patricia St. John

The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street by Karina Yan Glaser (reviewed here)

The Vanderbeekers and the Hidden Garden by Karina Yan Glaser

The Vanderbeekers to the Rescue by Karina Yan Glaser

Yours is the Night by Amanda Dykes

(From my Instagram account)

Have you read any of these?  Did you share a TTT post this week?

"A Table by the Window" by Hillary Manton Lodge

Have you ever read the last book in a trilogy first? I accidentally read book 3 of the Two Blue Doors series first (Together at the Table).  And I thought I could get the first two books from the library and that would be all okay... but then the library closed up.  Argh.  So I did what any self-respecting bookworm would do, and bought all three from Barnes & Noble's website because even a pandemic is not going to stop me from reading this series!

Turns out it was a good move because I really loved A Table by the Window too.  And now I have Reservations for Two on my TBR pile waiting for me to finish one of the books I'm currently reading so I can start it.  I didn't want to read it back-to-back with this one because sometimes that makes books in a series bleed together in my head, which I dislike.

Anyway.  In A Table by the Window, Juliette D'Alisa is working as a food critic in Portland, trying to process her grief over her grandmother's passing, and supporting her mother in her battle with cancer.  Also, she's tired of being alone and tired of people trying to set her up on dates, so she tries out a dating website and begins exchanging emails with Neil, a bacteriologist (I hope I got that right) from the Carolinas.  They connect.  They meet.  Sparkage ensues.  They can't figure out how to make a long-distance relationship work, but they want to try.

Through all this, Juliette is helping her brother Nico start a new restaurant, Two Blue Doors.  He's a chef, and his sous chef keeps hitting on Juliette, who doesn't told her family about Neil for quite a while.  And Juliette is also trying to figure out who the man is in the photo she found in her grandmother's cookbook and why he looks so much like Nico.

This book make me hungry.  I wanted to eat all the amazing things the characters made and ate.  Happily, Lodge includes a recipe at the end of many chapters for something mentioned in it.  I haven't tried any yet, but... I will :-)

One of the things I appreciated most about this book was that, although Juliette and Neil do meet and are physically attracted to each other, and kiss several times, there was never any question of "are they going to fall into bed with each other."  Neither of them considered that as an option, which was really refreshing, since most of the time single people in contemporary Christian fiction spend lots and lots of time either feeling guilty that they want to get into bed with someone and then doing it anyway and then being remorseful, or mourning the fact that there's just no way they can ever have sex because no one loves them or will ever marry them, etc.  Y'all, this was refreshing, okay?  And, judging by conversations I've had with my unmarried Christian friends, realistic. Very nicely done.

Also, these characters actually go to church.  Regularly.  I'm pretty tired of Christian fiction where no one ever attends church.  Also not realistic, folks!  Christians do go to church. Kind of a thing.  I mean, right now most of us are attending online, but ordinarily... they might not go every Sunday, but many of us do.

(Mine from my Instagram)

Particularly Good Bits:

My world had become unpredictable, but at least I could rely on the goodness of the Lord and the consistency of green vegetables (p. 117).

"Any experience that ends in knowledge is not a waste" (p. 249).

I came from a long line of women who wrote their own stories (p. 295).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG.  No violence, no cussing, no real innuendo, though there are some scenes where characters enjoy kissing each other.

Because I had to buy this in order to read it, it counts as my 12th book read for #TheUnreadShelfProject2020 right?  I say it does.

"Together at the Table" by Hillary Manton Lodge

I got this from the library not knowing that it was book three in a trilogy.  Oooooooops.  In my defense, the library barcodes and such had totally covered up all but the numeral 3 on the back cover, and that's the only place the cover mentioned it was part of a series, so I thought it was a stand-alone like Jane of Austin. 

But it was totally okay -- I figured out what was going on with no trouble at all.  Lodge is too good a writer to let new readers who stumble into the series midway be confused. 

And y'all... she is a very good writer indeed.  Within a few pages, I wanted to be friends with restaurateur Juliette D'Alisa, hang out at the Two Blue Doors restaurant she runs with her brother, go on genealogy-tracing adventures with her to Chicago and Europe. 

Juliette goes through a lot of relationship upheaval in this book.  Proposals.  Breakups.  Make-ups.  But none of it was... overwrought.  Or rushed.  Or sappy.  It all unfolded in a way that felt very believable to me.  The central romance was refreshingly realistic.  And there's a wedding in the middle of the book, not at the end, which was awesome!  Also, Juliette has two men in her life in a romantic sense, and neither of them is a jerk.  Or a creep.  Or a "bad boy."  They're both nice guys.  I can't remember the last time I ran into that.  Even in Jane Austen one guy ends up being secretly skanky or an opportunistic fortune hunter or whatever.  Lodge sidesteps all the love-triangle tropes so beautifully, and I applaud her.

All during her relationship changes, Juliette is also dealing with a lot of changes at the restaurant, plus she's trying to solve a mystery about her grandmother's experiences during World War II in France.  You know I also love things that involve WWII, so I really enjoyed that aspect of the story.  It's the one part where I really felt like having read the first two books would have been nice, but not to the point where I wanted to put this down and go find the earlier books and read those before finishing this one. 

Eventually, Juliette's grandmother's own words, via letter, fill in a lot of gaps and answer a lot of questions.  We learn her own story of love lost and love found.  Her story doesn't mirror Juliette's too neatly, and yet they are both stories of "lost love and second helpings" as the title puts it.

Also, Juliette's family is awesome.  She and her sisters are my people.  Their conversations are so much like things my brother and I say, dropping stuff like the Kobayashi Maru in very naturally, and just... can I please hang out with them?

I'm going to have to read the first two books now.  Our library is offering curb-side pick-up for materials to minimize contact, and I think the kids and I are going to have to try that this week.  If I end up loving those two as much as I loved this one, I'll have no choice but to buy the whole set so I can have it on my shelf and hug them as much as I want.  And reread them.

(Mine from my Instagram)

Particularly Good Bits:

I didn't answer.  I couldn't.  There were only questions in my head where answers used to be (p. 58).

Was that what it meant to be a grownup?  To finally realize that your parents weren't invincible, but that they had challenges and struggles of their own? (p. 80).

So often I feel worry is a heavy, wet, wool blanket we wear about our shoulders (p. 255).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for some discussions of sexual matters in dialog, some frank and some veiled, all tasteful and the sorts of things adult sisters would really say to each other, or wives to their husbands.  There are no descriptive sex scenes, and I would consider this a clean book, but some might not.  There is no cussing or scenes of violence, though the WWII parts involve some dangerous situations.

"Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury

Every time I read something by Ray Bradbury, I think, "Why don't I read more Ray Bradbury?"  I really need to remedy that and just... read more of his stuff.  I mean, I've read 3 of his novels and 2 collections of short stories, but I know he wrote a lot more than that.  Vanessa Rasanen has me convinced I need to try Something Wicked This Way Comes, so that's going on my TBR list.

I love this book.  I loved it the first time I read it, between freshman and sophomore years of college.  I've loved it every time I've reread it, and this is probably the fifth time I've read it.  It's fantastic.  The storytelling, the writing, the plot, the imagery, the characters, just everything.  I don't generally enjoy dystopian fiction, but this book hits so many of my buttons that I can't help but love it.  Loner protagonist?  Deep discussions about the value of books?  Characters who stand up against oppression?  Burning buildings?  People living on the fringes of society?  Check and check and check again. 

(From my Instagram)

If you don't know about this book, it's about a future society where everyone is obsessed with interactive television shows and spends their days and nights listening to music piped into their heads through little earbuds called seashells, and if that sounds eerily like today's society... yeah.  Bradbury wrote this in the 1950s, and wow, our world right now resembles his a lot.  Except that in this book, firemen set fires.  Specifically, they burn books.  All books, all the time.  Doesn't matter what they are, they must be burned. 

One fireman, Guy Montag, meets up with a quirky and unusual girl one evening, and her perspective on life changes his worldview forever.  Instead of burning books, he tries reading one, and... I don't want to spoil the book, so let's just say nothing is ever the same for him again.  It's fabulous, and everyone should read it, okay?  It has so much to say about the power of words.

I had the great pleasure of attending a reading given by the late, great Ray Bradbury when I was in college.  I brought along my copy of Fahrenheit, 451, which he signed for me.  I treasure it.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  a hard PG-13 for bad language, scary moments, violence, and discussion of things like suicide.

This is my 23rd book read and reviewed for my second go-round with the Classics Club and my 3rd for the Reams of Rereads event.

Mailbox Monday -- Birthday Edition

My birthday was a little over a week ago, and Cowboy couldn't figure out what to get me for a long time, so I said, "Oh, just find something on my Amazon wish list, it's bursting with ideas."  

So he checked out my Amazon list and decided to get me ten different books off it, focusing on the out-of-print ones we could only get used, but putting a few new ones in the mix too.  He wanted me to get a package or two in the mail every day for a whole week, and it pretty well worked!  I think there were only two days I didn't get a surprise from him, and some days more than one!

Top to bottom, they are:

Aspects of the Novel by E. M. Forster -- sooooo looking forward to digging into this once my writing/revising hangover passes.

The Silent Gondoliers by William Goldman -- this is supposed to be very funny, and it's from the guy who wrote The Princess Bride and set up in the same way, ie that it was originally told by S. Morgenstern.

Westward the Women by Nancy Wilson Ross -- I'd kind of forgotten this was on my wish list.  I'm curious as to whether it bears any resemblance to the movie of the same name.

Lark Rise to Candleford: A Trilogy by Flora Thompson -- I've heard a lot about this trilogy, and more about the TV show based on it, and I'm hoping it'll be really fun.

Before Green Gables by Budge Wilson -- obviously, a prequel to Anne of Green Gables, but other than that, I can't remember what I've heard about it, or even where.  I'm hoping to read this during My Year with Anne, if I can squeeze it in.

The Quest for Shakespeare by Joseph Pearce -- someone's attempt to figure out what Shakespeare was really like, I think.

The Lavender Cookbook by Sharon Shipley -- I tried cooking with lavender for the first time last year and had mixed results with recipes I found on Pinterest, so I'm hoping this will lead to more successes.

The Anne of Green Gables Treasury by Carolyn Strom Collins and Christina Wyss Eriksson -- a collection of a bunch of Anne-related stuff, like a map of Avonlea, a timeline of her life, how to do crafty activities mentioned in the books, and so on.

Tolkien's World -- a coloring book.  Yes, it's true.  I'm an adult colorer!  One of these days, I'll do a post about all the different adult coloring books I have, and which ones I like versus which ones have disappointed me, and so on.

EDIT:  I just realized I left one out!  Sam absconded with it, and I forgot to get it back for the photo and post.  It's Mr. Bliss by J.R.R. Tolkien -- a picture book about a man in a tall hat and his yellow car, which Joseph recommended to me a while back.

I'm linking this up with Mailbox Monday, which is always such fun :-)  Have you gotten any new (or at least, new to you) books lately?

Mailbox Monday (Sort Of)

I'm linking up with Mailbox Monday again this week!  I didn't get any of the following books in my mailbox, though.  Our library has used book sales four times a year, and one was this past weekend.  And I bought a stack of books, which kind of is what usually happens.

The light's really glaring here, and the titles are hard to read, so here's the list of what I got (and why), from the top down:

101 Things You Didn't Know About Shakespeare by Janet Ware with Al Davis (looks cute and funny, and I can never know too much about Shakespeare)

The Mystery of the Empty Room by August Huell Seaman (bought solely because it's all '50s cool)

Romeo and Juliet & West Side Story (yup, both plays in one volume, from 1965)

The Dark Tower 1:  The Gunslinger by Stephen King (I don't like King's fiction much, because I can't deal with horror, but I keep hearing good things about this series and... a gunslinger.  I'm hooked by that word, bigtime.)

Bear Island by Alistair MacLean (because I haven't read it yet)

The Jane Austen Guide to Life by Lori Smith (looks fun, and it's a gorgeously clean copy)

A Memoir of Jane Austen by J.E. Austen-Leigh (because I keep meaning to read this, so now maybe I will)

All Things New by Lynn Austin (I read lots of praise of Austin's novels, and this one is about a Virginia plantation during Reconstruction, so yes please!)

Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George (I have never heard of this, but it's a retelling of "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," which is one of my favorite fairy tales.)

Cowboy Curmudgeon and Other Poems by Wallace McRae (I'm thinking of doing Something Interesting for National Poetry Month, which is April.  Stay tuned for details.)

And then there are allllllllllllllllllll those green books on the bottom.  Those are all 14 volumes of a set called Great Writers of the English Language.  It looks amazing.  Like, I can't wait to delve into them myself, and I think in about 7 years, they're going to be a great curriculum for high school English and Lit classes for my kids.  Here's a closer look at them:

Uh-huh.  Sooooooooooooooooooooooo cool.

Have you read any of these?  Did you get any new (or new-to-you) books in your mailbox, on your doorstep, or *gasp* from a store this week?

Time for Mailbox Monday

Look what we got in our mailbox last week!!!  It's Natalie Lloyd's new book, The Key to Extraordinary.  Sam and I both loved her debut novel, A Snicker of Magic, sooooooo much that I pre-ordered this one.  

Sam just happened to be wearing a perfectly matching shirt when this arrived, so I snapped a shot of him holding it before either of us dug in.  So far, I've definitely been enjoying it!  Lloyd's writing is so quirky and sweet and imaginative.  This is not a sequel to A Snicker of Magic, but it's got some similarities:  a young girl protagonist with an odd family, magical little town in the Appalachian mountains, and heaps of fun.

I'm happy to be linking up with Mailbox Monday for the first time in a while.  I'm sure I'll be reviewing this fairly soon, too, so if it intrigues you, please check back!

My First Mailbox Monday of 2016

None of these actually arrived in my mailbox, but I'm linking up with Mailbox Monday anyway because I did buy them all this past week!  A local used bookstore is going out of business and had all its books 30% off, so you know I had to stop in.  Here's part of the treasure trove I brought home:

The Black Moth by Georgette Heyer -- People tell me that since I like Jane Austen, I might like Heyer too, so I'm giving her a try.

With Every Letter by Sarah Sundin -- I loved her "Wings of Glory" books and have been wanting to read this for a long time.

Mark of the Cross by Judith Pella -- I read a bunch of Judith Pella's books back in high school and liked them a ton.  This one is about England in the 1200s, so knights and stuff :-D

When Calls the Heart by Janette Oke -- My mom LOVED Janette Oke's books when I was young, and she owned the same edition of this one.  I read a bunch of Oke's books back then, and this is the one I remember liking best, so I decided that hey, for $1, it was worth revisiting.

North to the Orient by Anne Morrow Lindbergh --  About Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh flying around the Arctic Circle.

Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead by Anne Morrow Lindbergh -- I love AML's collections of letters and journal entries.  The only one I've read all the way through is Bring Me a Unicorn, so I snapped up this and the two following books because I'm eager to read more of these collections.  This one is going to be sad, though, because it's from 1929-1932, which means it will involve the time when the Lindberghs' baby son was kidnapped and murdered.

Locked Rooms and Open Doors by Anne Morrow Lindbergh -- Promises to be happier than the previous one because it's got more about the Lindberghs flying, and also them moving to England.

War Within and Without by Anne Morrow Lindbergh -- This one is about WWII, so it's going to be really interesting, because that was when Charles Lindbergh took a very unpopular isolationist stance about not joining the war.

My Little House Songbook -- A collection of songs that are mentioned in Laura Ingalls Wilder's books!  Complete with sheet music for the melodies :-)  I think my kids will enjoy this as part of their piano lessons before long.


And yes, I said these were "part of the treasure trove."  I also got a bunch of books for my kids!  But they rushed away with them before I could grab a picture.  I don't mind -- I'm happy they're excited about books :-)

Did you acquire any books this week, in your mailbox or otherwise?

All My "Hamlets"

In other words, here's some of the Hamlet-related stuff I've collected over the past 18 years.  I thought you might be interested in seeing some of the books and movies I've been talking about during this read-along.

First and foremost, my copies of the play's text:

The one on the very bottom is the one I'm using for the read-along.  The teensy one on the top was a gift from my friend Eva recently.  The one directly under it, with the sort of greyish cover, is the one I used in college when I both studied and taught this play.  Most of these I've bought used over the years -- the only ones I've bought new are the bottom one, the one for college, and one in the middle with a blue stripe that has Jude Law on the cover.

Why on earth do I have 16 copies of the text?  (Not counting the Charles and Mary Lamb retelling or the Cliffs Notes, which should have gone in a different photo.)  Because each one has interesting notes, commentaries, essays, and so forth, and I love seeing what other people have to say about this play and learning from them.  I have not read all of these yet!  I like to pull one out every now and then to learn something new.  I rarely let myself gorge on Hamlet the way I've been doing this month.

Then here are my illustrated retellings:

The only one I've read all the way through is the Manga version on top, which is gorgeous.  Just haven't gotten to the others yet.

Here are some books that are about the play, but don't contain the full text:

The top two are the ones I've been referencing a lot during the read-along, There is Nothing Like a Dane! is a humorous collection of anecdotes about playing the role on stage, and of course Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is a retelling in play form.  I haven't read I Am Hamlet yet.

See all those sticky notes in the top two books?

Those are marking all the places where they say things I think I might want to share with you during the read-alongs.  All the ones I haven't shared already, that is -- I pull them out when I'm finished with them.

And here's what I affectionately call "the doorstop."  I bought this on June 26, 1997, after reading several of Shakespeare's plays in a big book from the library and deciding I wanted my own copy.  I think I might have bought this while at the beach on a church youth group trip, actually.  This is the copy where I first read Hamlet.

And you can tell, by the fact that the binding is broken there and naturally opens straight to this play, that I re-read this copy several times between then and going to college the next year.

In fact... this whole play just comes right out of the book, along with King Lear.  That actually happened my senior year of college when I was taking a Shakespeare course and lugging this book around all semester -- we studied Lear and my binding gave up at that point.

Here's something I found tucked inside the back of that book:  notes I took the very first time I read the play!  

I didn't like having to flip back to the list of characters to remember who all these people with strange names were, so I copied them out and used this as a bookmark.  I did that with a bunch of other plays too -- I found those lists as well.  I also wrote down a bunch of favorite lines as I read.

Once I got to the "to be or not to be" soliloquy, you can see I just gave up jotting down favorite lines because I had too many -- I just wrote down the scene it was in and the page number and left it at that.

Anyway, here are all the movie versions I own:

I haven't yet watched Hamlet at Elsinore, which stars a young Christopher Plummer and is a recording of him in the role at the yearly Hamlet production in Elsinore itself.  Saving that one for a future treat.  I've only seen Legend of the Black Scorpion once, but the others I've watched three or more times each.  I shelve them in order of production, so they range from Burton's in the '60s to Tennant's in the '00s.

Finally, here are a couple things I have hanging on the walls in my library:

Those are both the full magazines, I didn't rip the covers off them.  One is a copy of Life from the '60s with a big interview with Richard Burton in it, and also some articles about Shakespeare in general.  The other is my Playbill from when I saw Hamlet performed live.  Since Burton and Law are two of my absolute favorite Hamlets, I like having them paired up on my wall this way.

And this is a print of Hamlet from Etsy shop Immortal Longings.  In it, reflected, you can kind of see two other prints I have on the opposite wall that are from the same shop, but of Much Ado About Nothing and The Taming of the Shrew instead.  (You can see those in this post on my other blog.)

I have a few other Hamlet-related things, but they're mostly just interesting to me, and this post is pretty long as it is, so we'll just quit here.

It's Mailbox Monday Again

I'm linking up with Mailbox Monday for the first time in a long time.  I've been trying not to buy so many books and movies lately, since my TBR and TBW shelves are sagging already.  But I hit a clearance sale on Barnes & Noble's website last week and did get a couple things for myself, as well as some birthday and Christmas presents for friends and family.  Here's what I got for me:

The Pursuit of Mary Bennet by Pamela Mingle has been on my TBR list for quite a while.  Isn't the cover pretty?  Of all the Pride and Prejudice pastiches that focus on Mary Bennet that I've read about, this one has gotten the most positive reviews, so I'm hopeful about it.

And Wild Western Days by Clarence E. Mulford is actually a collection of 3 full-length Hopalong Cassidy novels:  The Coming of Cassidy, Bar-20, and Hopalong Cassidy.  I've never ready any of Mulford's books, so I'm really looking forward to these!  I hear they're a lot different from the Hopalong Cassidy movies, much less light-hearted.  Interesting!

Top Ten Tuesday: Recently Acquired Books

As usual, this series is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.  This week, I'm listening ten books I've recently acquired, and by "recently" I mean "since the beginning of the year."  I basically scanned my TBR shelves and pulled off ten things I could remember acquiring since Christmas :-)

Brick Shakespeare:  Comedies by John McCann, Monica Sweeney, and Becky Thomas.  Cowboy bought me the tragedies version of this as a gift a few months ago (cuz it has Hamlet in it, of course), and although I haven't finished reading that one yet, when I found this in the clearance section of Barnes & Noble's website, I pounced.  These are so funny!  But not for children -- they don't bowdlerize the stories any.  Sam is really annoyed that I won't let him read them yet, since he's obsessed with all things Legos.  One day, kiddo!

Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini.  I remember liking the Errol Flynn movie, and I always like a good pirate story!  Found this at the library's last used book sale.

Cowboy Metaphysics by Peter A. French.  I know this is gonna be fascinating, when I get to it!  All about western movies and the kinds of ethical problems they grapple with.

Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell.  I recently saw the BBC miniseries (my review here), and while I know the series is based on more of Gaskell's stories than just this book, when I saw this at the used book store, I grabbed it.

Ellen by Heidi Peterson.  I've read her Tales for Little Ears, and I'm looking forward to seeing what she writes for older readers.

I, Claudia by Charity Bishop.  I haven't read any of her books yet, but I will soon remedy that!

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.  I won this in a giveaway from Reading in the Dark, and I know it's about WWII, and that's really all I know about it.

The Slaying of the Shrew by Simon Hawke.  I bought this at an estate sale, and it looks to be a whodunit with Shakespeare as the detective?  And it's part of a series?  I was intrigued.

Tolkien and C.S. Lewis:  The Gift of Friendship by Colin Duriez.  I don't even remember who recommended this to me anymore, but it looks so sweet and complex.

An Unexpected Cookbook by Chris-Rachael Oseland.  I stumbled on this on Amazon toward the end of winter, when I was still deep in the throes of Hobbit Sickness (like Dragon Sickness, only you're obsessed with the Hobbit movies, not gold), and I am so glad I bought it.  I've read a little of it already, and all the recipes here are hearty, simple fare that Hobbits might have eaten!  All made with ingredients you could have acquired in a rural world like that of the Shire.  We haven't tried any recipes yet, but I'll be sure to do so before I write up a full review on this book.