The Reading Room (37)

The Reading Room is a weekly update on books I'm reading or planning to read, posted on Tuesdays.

This past week, I went to a summer writer's workshop at Susquehanna University (it was amazing in every way), and on the last day, the professor teaching my class took us down to a used book store in town. He actually bought two or three books for each of us, then let us browse for whatever else we wanted to get ourselves. I came back with...well, quite a haul. And all for less than twenty dollars!

From top to bottom:

1. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (because I've wanted to read it forever)

2. The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (because my roommate said it was fantastic and I love historical fiction.)

3. The Liar's Club by Mary Karr (one of the books Tom, the writing professor, bought for me.)

4. The Lost World and Other Stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (I feel as though this one doesn't need any explanations. I will say, however, that my friend Helen found this for me and I was so grateful that I gave her the last copy the store had of No Country for Old Men, which I'd been planning to buy.)

5. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (Another one of Tom's recommendations.)

6. The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald (It was Fitzgerald for two dollars, all because someone underlined a few passages. No way to pass up that.)

7. Tales of the Jazz Age by F. Scott Fitzgerald (This one was a little more expensive, but it was the most beautiful edition I've ever seen of this book.)

8. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (I've wanted to read this one for awhile, too.)

9. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard (The other book Tom bought)

10. The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas ("Hey, isn't this book by the guy who wrote The Count of Monte Cristo?" someone said, and those words are basically how you summon me. I had to buy it.)

~blackandwhitedreamer