Stacking The Shelves is all about sharing the books you are adding to your shelves. This means you can include ‘˜real’ and ‘˜virtual’ books (ie physical and ebooks) you’ve bought, books you’ve borrowed from friends or the library, review books, and gifts.

These recent additions to my bookshelves and the ever growing TBR piles are the result of my last visit to Barter Books. I took in two bags of books (20 books), books I’d read and decided I wouldn’t want to re-read, and came home with 7, so I’m still in credit there and at least, for the time being, have fewer books in the house. Six of the books are fiction and just one is non-fiction.

From top to bottom they are all crime fiction apart from the last book:

• Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L Sayers – Lord Peter Wimsey’s brother the Duke of Denver is charged with murder. A series I’m dipping into now and then. This is the 2nd Lord Peter Wimsey book.
• Strangers and Brothers by C P Snow – currently published as George Passant, this is the first in the Strangers and Brothers series. I read some of the series many years ago, so not sure if I read this one then.
• Runaway by Peter May – In 1965, five teenage friends fled Glasgow for London to pursue their dream of musical stardom. Yet before year’s end three returned, and returned damaged.
• The Child’s Child by Barbara Vine – ‘A brother, a sister and a secret. Could you live a lie, to protect the one you love?’
• Dead Men and Broken Hearts by Craig Russell – the 4th in his Lennox thriller series set in Glasgow.
• Lennox by Craig Russell – the first in the series set in Glasgow in the 1950s. I love Russell’s Jan Fabel books set in Hamburg so am keen to see if I’ll also love his Lennox books.
• Pastels for Beginners by Ernest Savage – a book to improve my pastel painting, I hope. This was published in 1980, with lots of detail and mainly black and white illustrations. I’d prefer more colour illustrations.

And yesterday I went to the library and borrowed these:

• The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History by Boris Johnson.  Cath’s review at Read Warbler inspired me to read this book. She loved its conversational tone and Johnson’s insight into Churchill’s character – what made him tick. I reserved this book.
• The Pattern in the Carpet: a Personal History with Jigsaws by Margaret Drabble – a book that’s been on my wish list for years and there it was just sitting on the library shelves. Drabble describes is as a ‘hybrid’ – not a memoir, nor a history of jigsaws, although that is what she intended to write. It spiralled off in other directions and she is not sure what it is!
• Katherine Mansfield: a Secret Life by Claire Tomalin. I reserved this book for two reasons – I’ve recently read some of Katherine Mansfield’s short stories and I’ve enjoyed other biographies written by Claire Tomalin.

Now I need to get reading!!