Adding to my already sizeable reading queue

Yesterday's visit to the Book Barn in Niantic was, as usual, fabulous. For those who've never heard of it, the Book Barn is actually a series of buildings/barns on a piece of land out in Niantic, CT that is chock full of used books. It also is inhabited by several cats, dogs, and goats which roam the grounds freely and some even consent to being petted. Well, except the goats. They're fenced in, but you can pay a quarter to feed them corn.

They're very fat goats.

Mostly, though, I go for the books. The critters are a bonus.

So here are the latest gets:

Witch Hill - Marion Zimmer Bradly

Memoirs of Geisha - Arthur Golden

Thunderbird Falls - C.E. Murphy

The Dante Club - Matthew Pearl

In Stone's Clasp - Christine Golden

The Magicians' Guild - Trudi Canavan

The Scimitar - Ashley McConnell

Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It - Gina Kolata

I already have a pretty long list of books I intend to finish. Right now I'm in the middle of King Rat by China Mieville, and I already know that come hell or high water, the next book I'm reading is The Outback Stars by Sandra McDonald - because I intend to give it a good, thorough reviewing once I'm done.

I also have to note that I've become aware that I have some rather peculiar buying habits when it comes to books. Meaning, that books written by women or authors who's livejournals/blogs I've read are most likely to come home with me.

If you're a female author who's livejournal/blog I've read? It's nearly a done deal. So unless the first chapter of your book is completely unreadable, I'll probably give you a shot. Especially at used prices.

Is that sexist of me? Probably not, because if it were a male author that I knew or who's blog/LJ I read, I'd probably give them the same advantages.

After all, that's why I even looked twice at John Scalzi's "The Android's Dream".

Okay, so the blog thing trumps gender. I can live with that.

In case anyone was actually looking

With my luck, this would be the one time people were actually reading and giving a crap about this journal.

Please ignore any unlocked snippets that you may or may not have seen. You didn't see aaaaaaaaaanything. [/penguin]*.

Seriously, though, I didn't mean to leave that unlocked. I've been having to dump my progress for this novel into livejournal entries (which are damn useful for this purpose, btw) because I'm in Connecticut and the rest of my novel is in New York City.

I've been locking them, because they are filled with deeply shaming mistakes. The thing is, I'm hoping that if I can't become a good writer, I'll at least get to be a very good editor. But if people see your first drafts, then it shatters the illusion that you actually knew what the hell you were doing.

So pretend like you didn't see that.

*Props to anyone who gets the reference.