It's All About the Books

Niko, Mum and I went to the annual book sale put on by the Victoria Times-Colonist newspaper to raise funds for literacy. It was it the old Bay building downtown, so there was lots of parking and lots of room for the tons of books. The funny thing is I was feeling the need to buy books and was thinking of doing a used book store crawl this weekend when Niko mentioned the sale.

I decided to vary my routine and not start in mystery fiction for once. I could have easily blown the budget on hardcovers (at $3 ea) but I don't have a current list of what I have and didn't want doubles. Here is my haul:

• Death of a Prankster by M.C. Beaton, McGarr and the Method of Descartes by Bartholowmew Gill, and Missing Susan by Sharyn McCrumb were my paperback mystery finds.


• Tunisia: from Protectorate to Republic by Dwight L. Ling. An oldie (1967) for my history of the Middle East and North Africa collection.


• Imagined Communities: Reflections of the Origin and Spread of Nationalism by Benedict Anderson. Recommended reading from several courses I took, but I never had time to read.


• The Political Language of Islam by Bernard Lewis.


• Bible and Sword by Barbara W. Tuchman. Another oldie (1984 reprint of a 1956 book) for the collection


• Prospects for Development in the Asia-Pacific Area edited by Robert E Bedeski and John A Schofield. This is the "Proceedings of the First Annual University of Victoria - National Sun Yat-sen University Social Science Symposium" from 1999. I attended the symposium as a student volunteer and Dr. Bedeski was my favourite professor (he gave A's).


• Glorious Treasures of the Celts by Karen Sullivan. A short, shiny book full of wonderful pictures.


• The State of the World's Refugees: The Challenge of Protection by the High Commissioner of the UNHCR, 1993. Should be interesting in historical context.


• The Travels of Marco Polo no author, editor or translator credited. Something I've always meant to read.


• Women of the Raj by Margaret MacMillan


• The English Castle by Francois Matarasso

Not quite as eclectic of a collection as Niko's but it should make for some interesting reading.