Happy New Year!

I'm back with the internet now - I must confess, I did frequently sneak onto the internet on my mobile, but didn't communicate with the outside world. The posts all popped up at the right times, and I especially love all your recommendations for favourite biography/autobiography. So many titles I haven't heard of, and so many I want to read. Non-fiction always seems to appear at the top of my End of Year Best Reads, and yet accounts for fairly little of my reading - so lots of opportunities to rectify.

My End of Year Meme will appear tomorrow (do go and see Thomas' if you get a chance; it's hilarious) so this is post is just to wish you well for the New Year - and amuse you with my post-2010 book buying antics.

I had hoped to go to the Bookbarn in Somerset today, as nothing on their website suggested their open-7-days-a-week policy changed for New Year's Day. But repeated 'phone calls got no answer, so I assume they must be closed - note to Bookbarn: do something to your website! I'm heading back to Oxford on the 3rd, so a splurgy trip to the Bookbarn will have to wait.

Did I let this hold me back? No, of course not - I went online, and have ordered 24 books. Yes, 24 - the same number that I bought in 365 days last year! Before you fall off your chair, or anything, I should mention that 20 of them came in a boxset. The other four were books which were waiting on my Amazon Wishlist for the New Year to roll around.

Obviously they haven't arrived yet, but I'll tell you what they are now.


- English Journeys Collection: one of those fabulous boxed sets, with 20 titles to do with journeys and nature. Too many titles to list, but you can see them all here.

- Life Among the Savages - Shirley Jackson: I'm so intrigued how the author of We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Haunting of Hill House could write something which sounds more Provincial Lady than Headless Lady.

- Exchange - Paul Magrs: I saw this mentioned on Simon S's blog a while ago, and he says it's for any lover of books - AND it features a bibliophile called Simon.


- The Man Who Planted Trees - Jean Giono: Although this is in my Top Ten of 2010, I don't actually own a copy. So on Jan. 1st I had to put that right, no?

- As We Are Now - May Sarton: this was on Thomas' Top Ten of 2010, and really appealed - and, at 1p plus postage, I used my new-found buying freedom to have this wing its way to me.