We went to Half Price Books on Saturday and woo-hoo we even had to ask for a big box to carry out all of our treasures. My husband got several art and design books. You know, those heavy books. There is this one he got which sounds interesting so I may have to borrow it. Did you see the price too? At Amazon it’s $45 and he got it for $7.98!

Although I found a lot of books I wanted in the fiction section, I ended up buying all of my books from the clearance section for $1 or $2 a book. Now that’s a deal. Here are my finds:

• This Dame for Hire by Sandra Scoppettone
• The Grave Maurice by Martha Grimes
• The Old Contemptibles by Martha Grimes
• Criminals by Margot Livesey
• Taking Chances by Molly Keane
• The Hacienda by Lisa St. Aubin de Teran
• The Education of Harriet Hatfield by May Sarton
• The Last Kashmiri Rose by Barbara Cleverly
• The Samurai’s Wife by Laura Joh Rowland
• Love Song by Nikki Gemmell

So a couple of the Martha Grimes Richard Jury novels as I’m slowly making my way through the series. Same for the Laura Joh Rowland book. Nikki Gemmell is an author who hasn’t disappointed me in the past. Two new detectives to check out with the Scoppettone and Cleverly books and the others just sounded too good to pass up. I do love Half Price Books.

Unfortunately the weather is miserable today and I couldn’t meet up with my best friends for a movie night but it is a perfect day for curling up with a good book. So off I go to hopefully finish one of my Challenge reads.

Look, here is how I used to organize my book notes.

I have three of these journals. They aren’t all filled but it’s kind of fun to look through these and see what I was reading years ago. The earliest entry I could find was for October 1996. Wow, I had forgotten about some of these books. In the back of the journal there’s a section for “Notes to Myself” which I used to jot down bookish quotes I liked.

Now I keep track of the books I’ve read on the computer. It’s a nice way to organize by year and I can sort my list and all that but just looking through these jouranls kind makes me want to go back to that way of record keeping.