Lifeline Bookfest 2011 (June)

A week! An entire week without updating you about my lovely, lovely Lifeline BookFest purchases! what an unforgivably slack blogger I am.

But, end of semester being what it is, these have just been piled up on a corner of my desk (on top of two books about George Orwell, a glossary of literary terms, two notebooks, an exam, two draft journal articles, and a critical work on Victorian thing theory) for a week, waiting for me to find the time to photograph them.

The collection this time is, as it’s been for a while, rather heavy on the young-adult speculative fiction:

Well, excluding the Kurt Vonnegut essays, of course.

The Sisters Grimm book on the top there I bought because it’s the first volume and I already own volumes two and three. I haven’t read them, of course, but I do own them.

And another Diana Wynne Jones that I don’t already have! Not as successful as January’s sale in that respect, but, hey: a new Diana Wynne Jones is a new Diana Wynne Jones.

The book on the bottom is the real excitement in this pile, though:

Admittedly, I already own at least two other copies of the Brothers Grimm household tales: one a complete set and one a Victorian translation with only the more popular tales in it. But neither of them is a version of the household tales illustrated by Mervyn Peake.

I couldn’t have turned that down.

The other pile is also young-adult speculative-fiction heavy:

I’m keen on reading that Gail Carson Levine (even if it is prominently marked “Ages 9-12”), because I’ve a bit of a soft spot for her after reading Ella Enchanted and realising it wasn’t at all what I expected. She’s not in the Diana Wynne Jones camp for me, though: I’m not interested in all Levine’s books, just the odd one that takes my fancy.

The real joy here, though—the single best find of the entire sale, one that would have made the trip worthwhile even if I’d bought nothing else—is on the top of the pile:

No, not the Doctor Who short stories. Believe it or not, I bought those for research purposes.

No, really.

No, honest: I’m writing a journal article.

No, it’s the George MacDonald short fantasy fiction. I mean, how utterly, utterly beautiful are these?

They’re ’80s reprints, but they’re absolutely gorgeous.

And, what’s more, they’re an entire box full of MacDonald’s fantasy. Definitely and completely worth getting up at the crack of dawn on a Saturday and trawling through millions of books before breakfast.