Mailbox Monday: Second-hand Bookstores Are A Danger

I haven't done a Mailbox Monday in a while, but then I made the mistake of going into town on Monday and I bought myself some books. The meme is now hosted over at Mailbox Monday so hop over there to add your link to the Linky thing!

On a side note, I'm part of today's promotional tour for 'Immortal Sin' by Julie Milillo! Check it out here, in case you're interested.

So, on Saturday I went into a Waterstones (always a bad idea) and bought two books:

Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo for this week's Literature of the First World War post.

Few American novels are genuine classics, with a permanent place in our literature. This is one of them. First published in 1939, the story of an average American youth who "survives" World War I armless, legless and faceless with his mind intact was an immediate bestseller. Its anti-war message had a profound effect on Americans during the Vietnam era, and is now being reissued.

I've only just started this one but it's really good so far.

Darth Plagueis by James Luceno because it has been ages since I've read a Star Wars book and I thought it was about time I started again!

Darth Plagueis and Darth Sidious, Master and acolyte, target the galaxy for domination--and the Jedi Order for annihilation. But can they defy the merciless Sith tradition? Or will the desire of one to rule supreme, and the dream of the other to live forever, sow the seeds of their destruction?

I've only managed to read the Prologue so far but that was already really exciting, so I can't wait to find some spare time to continue reading.


After Waterstones, we went to this amazing second-hand bookstore here in Nottingham called Bookwise, which sells most of its books between £1 - £3, so I was extremely happy. Thankfully I was with a friend who pulled me away before I could pick more more books, but I did manage to snag these two:

Coriolanus by William Shakespeare. I'm in the process of writing a paper about the role of the Citizens in Coriolanus, so I figured it would be useful to have my own copy.

Shakespeare's last tragedy explores the career and death of a brilliant and arrogant Roman general. This is an ambitious and intriguing story of heroism.

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, which has been on my 100 Classics list for 2 years now. It's also on my Kindle, but I'm somehow finding it hard to read it on there so I thought a paperback copy might spur me on.

THINGS FALL APART tells two overlapping, intertwining stories, both of which center around Okonkwo, a “strong man” of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first of these stories traces Okonkwo's fall from grace with the tribal world in which he lives, and in its classical purity of line and economical beauty it provides us with a powerful fable about the immemorial conflict between the individual and society. 

So, what did you get in your literal or metaphorical Mailbox this week?