Books Bought and Books Desired

I bought two books today, "Soulless" by Gail Carriger and "The Various Flavors of Coffee" by Anthony Capella, both of which I plan to devour with all due haste before I have to trundle off and work at the Mercer Island Summer Celebration this weekend.
Meanwhile, here are some lovely tidbits from Shelf Awareness Pro:

BTW, I loved Funke's "Inkheart" books!
Inkheart trilogy author Cornelia Funke chose her top 10 fairytales
http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz11343355
for the Guardian, while cautioning that she was "not sure I should call
the 10 I have picked my favourites. Some of them made a huge impression
on me as a child with their haunting sadness and images that speak to us
in far more than just words. Others I only just discovered when I did my
research for Reckless. Are the tales about Arthur fairytales? And how
about the Mabinogion, my favourite collection of folklore? I didn't put
either of them on my list, as they each encompass too vast a universe. I
chose instead short and more isolated tales. Though, of course, once you
have a closer look, they are all related, as they all speak about human
nature."

I really, really want these books that are coming out later this fall:

Chango’s Beads and Two-tone Shoes by William Kennedy: William Kennedy, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the magisterial Albany cycle of novels (including Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game, Legs and Ironweed), now takes us to the Florida bar in pre-revolutionary Cuba, where the journalist Daniel Quinn meets a fellow lover of simple declarative sentences, Ernest Hemingway. After brushes with revolutionaries, crooked politicians and drug-running gangsters, Quinn winds up in Albany as it is engulfed in race riots on the eve of Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination. Hungry fans are sure to rejoice over Kennedy’s first novel in almost a decade.

When I Was a Child I Read Books: Essays by Marilynne Robinson: “When I was a child I read books,” writes Robinson, “My reading was not indiscriminate. I preferred books that were old and thick and dull and hard…I looked to Galilee for meaning and to Spokane for orthodonture, and beyond that the world where I was I found entirely sufficient.” The exalted author of Gilead and Home claims that the hardest work of her life has been convincing New Englanders that growing up in Idaho was not “intellectually crippling.” There, during her childhood, she read about Cromwell, Constantinople, and Carthage, and her new collection of essays celebrates the joy, and the enduring value, of reading.

I have two books coming from SFBC, Ghost Story by Jim Butcher and I can't remember the other one. Anyway, I will also be getting some Sharon Lee and Steve Miller books from Uncle Hugos as soon as I get paid. I'm looking forward to some delicious summer reading at home, with air conditioning!