I bought some books!

I’m planning to read C.J. Sansom’s Tudor era mysteries, the Matthew Shardlake Series. I found a good deal on the first book, Dissolution, a few weeks ago, and when I saw that my used bookstore had the next three books in the series, I snatched them up.

• Sovereign by C.J. Sansom
• Dark Fire by C.J. Sansom
• Revelation by C.J. Sansom

And while I already owned a copy of Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, it was a paperback copy, and I had the rest of the trilogy in (first edition) hardback. So when the used bookstore got a hardback copy of Wolf Hall, I grabbed that, too. Happily, it is also a first edition- and in nearly new condition!

• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

What you will not notice among my new books is the History of Middle-earth boxed set I pre-ordered.

*sighs*

So I was puttering around the house on Wednesday morning, waiting for places to open so I could go and run my errands when I got a call from the owner of the indie bookshop downtown. She had, for some reason, received another set of the books and noticed that the top back edge of the box, which had a layer of bonded covering, was cracked and peeling. So she took a look at the one she had set aside for me, and noticed that the same thing had happened on that one, too! So she received a total of four sets, and all of them had some kind of damage.

The Houghton Mifflin rep was in that day, so she took some photos of the damaged sets and ordered yet another copy.

So hopefully, I will have an undamaged set next week.

Cross your fingers.

In the meantime, I have some great Tudor-era historical fiction and a funny (to me) story about a pre-ordered Tolkien boxed set. I’ll get it one of these days!