Bookshelf Traveling: New Books

I am participating in the Bookshelf Traveling meme. It was originated by Judith at Reader in the Wilderness, and is now hosted by Katrina at Pining for the West.

This time I am looking at newly purchased books. Saturday morning we had a fun trip to Chaucer's Books, a local bookseller. Before that we had been ordering and picking up using curbside pickup occasionally. The bookstore has been open for a few weeks, but this is the first visit we have made. The usual precautions are taken: masks required and social distancing, a limited number of people in the store at one time, and use of hand sanitizer on entering the store.

I had a list of books to look for and I already knew that they should have the books on their shelves (based on their website). 

Here are the books I bought:

Fortune Favors the Dead by Stephen Spotswood. This debut novel just came out in October 2020. I rarely purchase a book in the same year it is published, except in some cases when it is an author I already read and try to keep up with. But I read this article at Shotsmag: "Stephen Spotswood - Fortune Favours the Dead - The Inspiration." It inspired me to go out and buy the book as soon as possible. Why? Because the author expressed a fondness for Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe series and because the series is described at Kirkus Reviews as a "provocative gender-flipping of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin." And I like the cover too.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier and Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

These are two classics on my list for the Classics Club. I wanted to have a copy on hand for when the mood hits and I wanted to be assured that the print size was adequate. So many classics have tiny print. So I needed to see them in person.

The edition of Little Women that I picked is a Penguin Classics Deluxe edition with an introduction, a glossary, some brief contextual essays, and some letters and illustrations.

Around the World in 80 Trees by Jonathan Drori with illustrations by Lucille Clerc 

I first read about this book at Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs.

Though more than 60,000 species of trees exist, the 80 selected by Drori were selected to illuminate the diversity of trees across continents. As such, the reader gets a snapshot look at would otherwise be too much information for anyone but an expert to contend with. The species are organized by location, making the book feel like a trip around the world in more ways than one as the reader hops from country to country. Occasional footnotes connect certain species with similar properties so the reader has the option to explore the species through what they have in common rather than geographic location.

Though not a book that most would sit down and read cover-to-cover (unless you really, really love trees!), the short vignettes that make up the book create a visually pleasing and easy to read volume full of botanical and cultural information.

This description from a book review at American Forests.

The illustrations are gorgeous. My father loved trees (and birds) and he would have loved to sit and savor this book.